After reading Katie Jean’s Blog post last night about snow in Iowa and the wonderful memories she is creating for her children. I paused and thought about my Christmas memories.
As I was sharing with my husband this last weekend after we had completed our Christmas decorations. For me Christmas has never been a Norman Rockwell experience. I know that for some it is truly an event. For me it has always been just something that you do. Now don’t get me wrong. I celebrate Jesus as my Savior and Lord EVER day, I don’t save it for December 25th.
Again back to Katie Jean’s blog post, I thought about growing up where snow was usually measured in feet and not inches, I have played softball using snowshoes, put little flags on your car antenna so that you could seen at an intersection that has snow piled high. I have many interesting memories around snow, but my favorite one happened one Christmas Eve.
I was back at my mother’s house in Michigan, I was home visiting my family for the Holidays. It had been cold that winter but no snow fall to speak of. In fact there wasn’t any snow on the ground. Then at about 4pm that evening it started to snow. The snow was one of those perfect snows. Coming down slowly with large flakes and no wind to blow or drift. We had been sitting around the house all evening not doing much when about 9pm I happened to look out the window and we had had several inches of snow accumulated on the ground by them. It was then that I decided it was time to go and build a snowman.
My younger sister and I got on our boots, coats and gloves and headed out into the front yard. The snow was perfect. We got to work. By 10pm we were giggling and laughing so loud that my mother came out to see what we were up to and to remind us that we needed to keep it down. We built not just your average snow man, no. Our snow man had snow arms, one hand on his hip and the other arm rose above his head waving at the cars that would drive by our house. When we finished it was after midnight and the snow had finally stopped. Now some would ask why it took so long? It was because this snow man ended up being over 12FT tall, yes 12 FT. To put his head on we had to split that ball in half to make it light enough to carry it up the ladder to place it on top of the other two sections.
I went to bed that night exhausted not only from the work of moving all that snow (we even had to take some from the neighbors house- they didn’t have kids - to have enough) but from my sister and I laughing and playing. The next morning It was such a wonderful site to look out our Bi-Level House and the front window and see the back side of the head of this snowman. It was fun to watch all the cars that drove by slow to a stop and just look at our snowman. Later in the day many of the cars would stop and take pictures. Funny thing – we never took our own pictures of it.
That is the one thing that we all talk about when my family talks about Christmas, is the giant snowman that we built. Thanks to a bitter cold spell that set in during January, that snowman lasted until almost Easter. Sure his arms fell off but he was still a snowman.
Make the time to make memories, even if it is at 10pm on Christmas Eve.
Fowl Words
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