Snow

I love snow!  It's so beautiful and simplistic, yet ornate in it's construction.  The stillness and quiet that seems to accompany the falling of a snow just makes me smile.  I know a lot of people don't like it because they have to drive in it.  But, to me that is just part of it.  It's kind of like accepting that you're going to have sand in your britches from spending a day on the beach.

When I was growing up we used to get A LOT of snow during our winter months.  I have great memories of digging tunnels through the mounds that piled up on either side of our driveway from my dad shoveling and/or snow blowing to get the snow off the driveway.  We'd make forts and have snow ball wars.

The subdivision I grew up in backed up to a large corn field.  It had several big hills and we'd go sledding back there in those fields when the snow got deep enough.  Having great sledding hills right across the street from my house was cool.

It was not the only place to go sledding, though.  The city park that was just a mile from my house has a spot in it called Bum's Hallow.  It's actually hallow in the middle of hills.  You can sled from any direction and there were natural ramps made by bumps in the hills.  It was a very busy place when it snowed.

Now we don't get hardly any snow at all.  The boundaries of "civilization" around where I live have expanded.  There is this thing they call and "industrial bubble" over our part of the world that has an effect on how the weather progresses through our area.  We are not close enough to the mountains or have a large plain area to the west of us like Kansas City does, so basically the weather loses it's "umpf" by the time it gets to us or is pushed south.  The middle of the state tends to take the velocity out of most of the weather systems so they are not strong enough to break through the bubble here and either just die off or get diverted.  

I find it sad because my kids have never gotten to really play in the snow like I did as a child.  They have some and even this year they did get to make a snowman.  It was very small and used up ALL the snow that was in the yard, but yet it was a snowman.  I wish we could build snowmen like my dad made when I was growing up.  They were taller than him. Somewhere there used to be a picture of one of those snowmen, but I cannot find it.  I do, however have a picture of the snowman my kids made just a couple weeks ago.

It's still just January, so I guess we still have some time to hopefully get a big snow, but if the past several years are any indication in our weather trends, it's not likely to happen.  I just really miss our big time snow falls.

Is there anything you miss from your childhood?