Wednesday morning we woke up to some absolutely beautiful snow all over the ground. It had started snowing Tuesday afternoon, off and on. There was even enough on the ground for the kids to make a little snowman. But during the night, it really came down. So much that it completely covered that snowman and most everything else as well. At 6:30 am our doorbell rang (!) and I opened it to some neighbor kids telling us that the school bus wasn't going to be able to pick up the kids, but school would still start at 8:15 as usual. All righty then, could you have maybe waited 30 minutes to tell me that? We sent the kids on the city bus, but that was late as well, due to the road into our village being the last to get plowed.
I discovered that we were woefully unprepared for winter. Nick and Sophie had no winter boots, Noah is the only one with snow pants, but only one mitten, and of course, the car doesn't have its winter tires on yet. I bundled them up as well as I could, and as soon as the roads were cleared, Noah and I headed to the store to pick up warm clothes for the kids. The one thing I had done was stay up until midnight Tuesday night sewing the zipper back onto Sarah's winter coat. Because she is left handed, she pulls on the zipper differently than it was designed for, and she tends to rip the handle right off. I had bought new zipper weeks ago, but it was more difficult to sew in that I had thought. Her coat is quite puffy, and my little sewing machine couldn't handle it, which meant that I had to sew the bulk of it by hand.
With new boots, hats and fixed coats, the kids played happily all afternoon in the snow, building a fort with the neighbor kids. It was a great start to the winter, we only hope there will be even more snow soon.