Dad is totally the fun parent at our house

Mason was so excited that it finally snowed! He could hardly wait to get outside and play in it, which was a drastic change in attitude from this time last year. Alan contributed to the excitement by providing a sledding opportunity at a little park by our house. Not being such a snow-friendly mom, I was grateful for his effort to pick a park with relatively small hills and absolutely no trees for this first tubing trip; Mason is half mine after all, so he's genetically predisposed to run into things when he shouldn't.

After breakfast, we headed outside to shovel the snow. While we were outside, our neighbor across the street and her kids came out to tackle the same chore. She has a plow on their 4-wheeler, so we borrowed her two older children while she plowed the driveway. EmmaLee was a great help with the snowman building (I haven't done it in 20-some-odd years), but even with her help the head was a little small and had some trouble staying on. Carter helped Alan shovel for most of the time, but also took time to teach Mason how to eat snow. EmmaLee had fun initiating a snowball fight with Alan.

Post-shoveling, EmmaLee had to go to school but Carter went to the park with us. Wouldn't you know, even with the new inner tube, Mason's favorite thing was to roll down the hills himself. He just wasn't such a huge fan of having snow on his face, and would periodically stop and ask me or his dad to clean him off. When Mason started asking for a drink, we headed home and Mason got one of his first piggy back rides from Dad; his initial protest of "I don't see any piggies!" was pretty funny, but it only took him a second to figure out what was happening.

The first snow of the year brought back a couple of things for me: first is my favorite thing about winter. We love to throw snowballs for Rio and Samson almost as much as they like to eat them. The catch is they often lose the snowball in the snow and will track back to Alan and stare him down as if they don't believe he really threw it. The second thing is the simple joy involved in a snowstorm when you're a little kid. Mason didn't have to worry about things like extended commute times, driver safety, and how much ibuprofen is required to alleviate an after-shoveling backache. All he had to do was sit back and enjoy being a kid, and it was so fun to be caught up in that for a little while. Also, now every time I ask him to put on his coat, he asks if we're building a snowman. I think he liked that part.

Thanks for letting us borrow your kids, Melissa! You guys are great neighbors and I look forward to many more snowstorms with you guys. It isn't the same as us three ladies tackling as many driveways as our shovels will handle, but it's still fun!