By the time Lola, Mathilde and I were ready to walk to school, the snowflakes had become large and fluffy and our yard was transformed into a Winter wonderland. It was a pretty magical sight and the girls couldn't wait to get out there in the snow.
Decked out in our warmest puffy jackets, beanies, mittens and snow boots (all of which took forever to put on!) we headed outside and started our slow walk to school. Usually Lola and I ride our scooters while Mathilde zooms along on her trusty balance bike and we get to school in about fifteen to twenty minutes. With snow on the ground and the sidewalks icy I figured that wheels were probably not the best option so we stuck with walking instead. This meant that our journey to school took about half an hour as the girls slowly trudged through the snow.
When we arrived at school we discovered a yellow flag on the school's flag pole. This meant that instead of waiting outside their classrooms for the bell to ring as usual, the kids were to enter their classrooms right away. I had wondered what the procedure would be for snowy days.
After I dropped Lola and Mathilde off at school I headed home, stopping to take photos of the environment along the way. I've only ever experienced snow in Winter so for the most part I'm used to seeing snow with bare trees. Seeing Fall foliage and and snow together was a whole new experience. It was so pretty. Those poor Summer flowers that were still blooming didn't do so well with the snow though. The droopy sunflowers below were always a little ray of sunshine on our walk to school, but the snow killed them off pretty quickly. A few days later and they were black. Our roses suffered the same fate.
Aside from the Fall foliage, seeing Halloween decorations and snow together was a new, and rather hilarious sight. The skulls in our front yard were covered in snow and formed icicles dripping from their open mouths. The skeleton flamingos that replaced our regular lawn flamingos for Halloween looked positively chilled to the bone! Ha!
The snow continued to fall for much of the day, blanketing everything in a thick layer of white. Shortly before school pick up the snow stopped falling and the blue sky reappeared. This made for perfect conditions for playing in the snow on our walk home. That walk took so long as Mathilde insisted on picking up (and throwing!) as much snow as possible, karate chopping snow off trees and she took so many detours along the way! The sidewalks were free of snow but she insisted in walking on the snow covered lawn along the sides. Lola was more interested in eating the fresh snow, dubbing it a "Snow Sundae" - to which Mathilde replied "It's not Sunday; it's Thursday"!
As you can see from the pics below, the kids LOVED walking home through the snow - even if their rosy cheeks and snotty noses look otherwise!
Many of the trees along our walk home had started to dump leaves all over the ground due to the weight of the snow. I'd never walked through leaves and snow like this and I have to say it was delightfully crunchy to walk on! The sidewalk along the main road was covered in a sea of green, yellow, brown and orange leaves that had not been there just hours earlier. As an aside, the following day, most of these trees were completely bare, having dumped all of their leaves in just one day. With the snow melted and the grass and concrete equally covered in leaves, it was hard to tell where the edges of the sidewalk were!
When we (finally) reached home, the girls were delighted to see the skulls in our front yard with their snow mohawks and icicles. Mathilde accidentally broke off one of the icicles while trying to touch it, and then pretended that she too had formed an icicle hanging off her jaw.
The girls were so keen to get out the backyard and see what it looked like that they didn't even stop to warm up inside. They were straight out the back knocking snow off trees and the play equipment, attempting to make a snowman and throwing snow at each other - and me. By now it had started snowing again so any bare patches in the snow that had started to form were quickly filled up with white again.
We got our old sleds out of the basement (they hadn't been used since our Christmas trip to Utah in 2017) and headed up to the back corner of our yard for some sledding. This was the first time that the back part of our backyard has really been used. It's too steep and overgrown to do much with, but with the blanket of snow covering everything it made for a fun sled run. Lola and our neighbor had a ton of fun sledding down the hill at high speed - and often crashing into the fence or a tree - but as you can probably tell by Mathilde's face in the pics below, she wasn't quite so keen on it.
The snow continued to fall on and off through the evening but by morning it had completely stopped. There was still plenty of snow on the ground for our trip to school, but as the snow on the sidewalks was completely melted we were back to scooting and bike riding. In fact, with the sun shining, it was warm enough for the girls to just wear their regular hoodies to school rather than snow jackets. By the time I picked the girls up again in the afternoon the snow was pretty much all gone apart from a few patches that were shaded from the sun.
If you've lived somewhere with snowy Winters, then there's a good chance that you won't share my excitement for our snowy day, but as someone who has always considered "the snow" a destination rather than a weather event, experiencing snow without having to travel for hours was pretty exciting. I'm sure I probably won't feel this way come late Spring when we're still having snowfall on and off, but for now, it was a pretty exciting experience.
I see a snow flake on my phone's weather app for next Thursday so keep an eye on my Instagram stories for more snow fun coming soon!
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