[Scanty] Snow Days 2017

When Atlanta experienced the Snowpocalypse two years ago, we were thankfully at home and not on the roads. But many people we knew were affected–neighbors, family members, friends. Though we now live an hour northeast of Atlanta, when any weatherman predicts snow in the South, everyone makes a last-minute grocery store trip to stock up on essentials and turns on the weather channel to monitor the impending storm, which happens weekly if you live up North.

Thankfully, I had recently made a trip to Costco and was stocked up on Hobson essentials of frozen meat and veggies, eggs, milk, half and half and coffee–with coffee being the most important staple. So we settled into the weekend with poor man’s surf and turf (salmon and hamburgers), bracing for iciness but hoping for the powdery stuff.

Though 4 to 6 inches was predicted in our county, we didn’t even get an inch. But thankfully my kids are young so any snow is good snow to them. I tried my best to stall them since they were begging to go outside at 7 a.m.  But while I was showering and Daddy was on kid duty, the Rowdy boys found a way to entertain themselves (unbeknownst to Daddy) and managed to open their turtle rock paint kits they got for Christmas and paint them, along with the kitchen table and their pajamas.

After cleaning up a huge mess, I stuffed the kids into about a million layers before we headed outside to see what all this snow was about.

We started out in the front yard, testing the crunchy iced-over snow and sledding down the semi-slick driveway. The kids had fun but it took a lot of pushing because the driveway ice was spotty.

So we ventured to the backyard, which is steeper as it leads down to the lake. We angled the sled diagonal to the hill and James was waiting to catch them. With one hand, I gave a single push and off they went until….well, the video below [also linked here] says it all.

Least to say, Scarlett was a bit scarred from the incident and chose to remain indoors the rest of the day. Luckily, the sledding incident wasn’t anything a little bit of homemade hot cocoa couldn’t fix. James made one version full of milk and unsalted butter and I made another dairy-free version for Beau using the recipe for Supercharged Hot Cocoa (using coconut milk) from the Wellness Mama cookbook I just got in the mail.

During naptime, I tried my hand at a batch of peppermint charcoal homemade soap. The aesthetics of my soaps leave a lot to be desired, but the smell is oh so good–along with the health benefits of activated charcoal and organic ingredients! I’m excited to try some new options soon.

It wasn’t the type of snow day we were hoping for–as we weren’t snowed in and the roads were drivable–but it was fun to see our kids’ faces light up as they looked out the window that morning at the white ground, and made me nostalgic for snow days when I was a kid. Though it was frigid, Sunday morning we were back in our routine and prepping to tackle a new week in the New Year.