Building a First Snowman

Ann H GabhartAnn's Posts, One Writer's Journal

How long has it been since you built a snowman? Even if it’s been years, don’t you still go out and check out every snowfall and automatically rate the snow as good for building snowmen or sledding? We had snow and some ice on Monday night and Tuesday. It started out as icy rain and in the night, changed to snow before going back to freezing rain or just cold rain. It was one of those interesting days if you had to be out in it all. Then last night the temps went up during the night and the ice melted and the snow condensed, but it was still there.

So today I kept my two-year-old granddaughter for a couple of hours, and we went out to play in the little bit of snow left and built a snowman. Her first at age two and a half. The snow had passed beyond the good snowman building time. We had to sculpt the snowman by scraping up handfuls of snow and plastering it on the snowman. Jillian had fun making arms and hair and adding to the snowman’s head until it had a rather odd shape. A head that fell off several times as she added more snow, but we just picked it up and stuck it back atop its body. She had fun and so did I watching her even though it took an hour for my fingers to thaw back out after I convinced her (by picking her up and carrying her) to go inside. She wasn’t all that cold because she looked like a little blue snowman herself in her snow pants and jacket.

I’ve built several snowmen since I left childhood days behind. Usually with a kid or a grandkid. But once not so many years ago when it snowed in March and then turned sunshiny and rather balmy, I went out and played in the snow by myself. I made a snowman and snow woman and their dog. The snow was just too perfect for snowman building to waste that day. And today a few chilled fingers were a small price to pay to see the fun Jillian had sculpting her first snowman.

Here are a few snowman quotes.

  • Snowmen fall from Heaven unassembled.
  • When it snows you have two choices: shovel or make snow angels.
  • The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event.

Hope you enjoyed the snow if it fell where you are and that you didn’t have to drive anywhere if the roads were slippery. Oh yeah, and we have one week till Christmas. Snow and Christmas all in the same week. What more could we want? I know. The cookies baked. The candy beaten. The presents wrapped. The cards sent. The Christmas Spirit. Wishing you all a healthy dose of that last whether the other stuff gets done or not.