The Season of Unexpected Gifts...

Sometimes, in this season of lights in the darkness and thoughtful gifts, come presents that just cannot be wrapped in shiny paper. Yesterday was one of those unexpected presents as Mother Nature sent a horrid combination of snow, ice rain and finally huge, fluffy flakes to cover up all the sleet. Schools in most of the Province were closed, so Nick and I got to slip back into dreams under our nice warm duvet as soon as they announced the closures at 6:15 am. I was just surfacing from the last traces of a dream when Erin came barreling into our room two hours later in a panic. She’d just woken up and looked out to see that there wasn’t much snow on the ground, but didn’t see the ice rain. She assumed that we’d all overslept and that she was going to be late for school which was due to start in 5 minutes!

Once the girls realized that they had a snow day, the whoops of joy began. I made them blueberry muffins for breakfast while they hid upstairs practicing a Play that they intended to put on for us as soon as we’d all eaten. Sure enough, they treated us to a hilarious production of “The Odd-Coloured Reindeer” in which Bethany played two roles, her favourite being Rudolf’s odd-coloured daughter. This reindeer was PINK, so she had on one of Erin’s dresses, black socks on her hands and feet for hooves and then the headband antlers that come out with the decorations once a year. Since they were bright red instead of brown, the story was adapted to include the fact that her antlers glowed too!

After they cleaned up the “set”, they moved on to a massive Barbie game in the basement, a session of dress-up where I had to keep encouraging them to put on just a bit more clothing (it wasn’t THAT warm in the basement!) and finally a puzzle session in the living room. Luckily, they cleaned each thing up before moving on, but it was giddily exhausting to watch them play!

I still managed to get quite a bit of work done and even some stitching, but it was fun to have two different kinds of soup simmering on the stove and the sounds of giggles in the background. Nick braved the storm to get a few groceries, but the rest of us just stayed cozy in the house and celebrated this unexpected pause in a most hectic time of the year.