A snowy day in January

I've gone soft. It is only minus 1C, and I say: Oh, it is cold. My nieces who live in Russia would laugh at me. They go to the nursery and school at minus 27C, wrapped up against the cold. They happily play outdoors in the snow at minus 20C and lower, skating, sledging, sliding and having fun. Here we have a small scattering of snow, and everyone panics, oh look, it's snowing. 10cm of snow, and the schools are closed. Pathetic really. Every winter snow comes as a big surprise. The local district council can't cope, and it's not just our small town.
There are happy little people though who enjoy the snow and get excited at the sight of a snowdrift. Take my little man Eddie. As soon as he saw the snow, he was ready to go out and dig. I could not find any matching gloves or mittens for Eddie, so he had to wear one mitten and one glove, but that didn't bother him.

We went out exploring into the garden, which looked totally transformed, white and magical.

After watching the Snowman and the Snowdog on Christmas, Eddie has been dreaming about building our own snowdog. Alas, the snow has been too fluffy and soft for us to be able to build anything, it kept falling apart. All we managed to do was a funny squashed fiasco which we named a snow chicken.

Sasha refused to go out with us when I invited him, but after a while his curiosity won over, he peeked out of the back door, but as he was still in his PJs, I shooed him back indoors.

I love snow, it reminds me of Russia and long truly cold winters. I remember one New Year's eve when it was minus 54C (I think it was the coldest winter in my memory). We were going to celebrate with my parents' friends. Mum made sure we were wrapped up well, the faces covered with the warm scarves, only eyes peeking from above the scarf, and went out for a walk to the friends' house. And it was fun. Maybe because we were kids, it all seemed like an adventure and not a big deal. I cannot imagine now going out at -54C with my kids.
Or how cool it was to have an ice cream outdoors in winter. Or skating with a friend and enjoying the crisp air and eating the chocolate truffles which were as hard as rocks in the cold. Falling in the snowdrift and not being able to get up, as the snow was so deep and laughing at myself. Country-skiing at school and again getting stuck in the snow with a friend, when we tried to cheat and not go the whole way trying to climb over the huge snowdrift to the other side of the track when nobody was looking, by the time we managed to get out of that snow, we were abysmally late.
Frolicking in the snow is one of the things that you have to experience at least once in your lifetime.

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