I have this saying that it only snows once every five years in Georgia, but miraculously, we got snow today. It wasn’t a huge amount, but enough to give a nice white blanket to the world around us, to where the girls could wake up, look out the window and be marveled by the sight of falling snow a bright white morning outside.
In preparation for the winter conditions, most of the state went into its typical overreaction of shutting everything down, but after the Snowpocalypse of 2013, I’m not going to complain about the state erring on the side of safety and precaution versus thinking it won’t be so bad and ending up being a national embarrassment all over again. The government shut down, schools closed, dance class closed. My waste management company straight up said they weren’t coming, with no makeup day planned. Pest control company was scheduled to come, and they nope’d out, understandably.
But the best was my job, who graciously announced closure of the office on Friday in preparation for the wintery conditions. The kicker? Everyone works from home on Fridays anyway, so it’s basically the equivalent of allowing people to go to church on Sunday.
Regardless, with snow having arrived, it was my utmost priority to get outside and spend some time with the girls, since they basically will see snow only every five years for as long as we live in Georgia and the south. So, channeling one of my all-time favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips, I didn’t wait to have to be coerced and swayed to play some hooky from work so I could play with my kids in the snow, I basically just checked in at 9, got myself dressed and ready for the cold, and was out the door and in the snow with the girls as soon as I could.
And let me say, how lucky we were to have gotten that real good type of snow, that’s perfect for snowballs, making snowmen and being all malleable and perfect. Getting to build a snowman with my kids is a privilege I didn’t think about how lucky I am to get to do it, considering the lack of opportunities it’s more likely to be in coming years, and it brings me great joy just thinking about how I was able to do such. And the fact that my house just happened to have an actual carrot and lumps of coal for traditional eyes and noses, how fortunate that all have lined up so well.
I decided to name our snowman “Jon Snow, king in the south;” the girls were not impressed, and balked immediately.
So I said okay, we can call him Aegon.
They didn’t like that either.
But my au pair did have a wonderful idea, which was to recreate a photograph from when #2 wasn’t even a year old, when the last time snow fell on Georgia. And it was from this, did I realize that it’s almost been exactly three years since the last snowfall. Otherwise, I will never say no when the opportunity to do a timelapse photo.
#2 usually isn’t a fan of smiling for cameras, but clearly the arrival of snow seemed to elicit such a genuine happy response that here we are. Best snow day ever.
