First (and Only?) Snow

So, last Friday it snowed for the first time in Chestertown. Not first time ever, just first time this year. Well, actually, it wasn’t the first time this year. It was the first time this year that the snow stuck. That’s a lot of qualifiers, but it made the title of the post too long, so I’m just calling it the first snow for simplicity’s sake.

The kids were excited. It was almost dark out, but we decided to don our snowsuits (for what might be the only time this year) and enjoy it. Turns out, Alden and Kato had already both outgrown their snowsuits, so Alden went without and Kato got Alden’s. Thank god for hand-me-downs.

For those of you who have this romantic notion of our barn sitting out in the middle of a windswept field, here is your spoiler alert. Our barn, in fact, is in the middle of town, and its footprint is basically the sum of the property. (I know, that spoiler alert didn’t give you much time to prepare. Sorry about that.) This basically means we have no yard.

Because of this, our children are reduced to making snow angels on the sidewalk.

Even Iggy recognized how humiliating this is.

I tried to remedy the situation by suggesting we head over to Bob’s house. Bob’s house has a great backyard.

Unfortunately, the backyard also had grass in it. Grass which was higher than the cumulative snowfall. Somehow, this did not diminish the desire to frisk.

Several attempts were even made to throw snowballs.

If dusty piles of powder and dirt and grass can really be called snowballs.

Within ten minutes, the whole yard was trampled and there weren’t two flecks of snow that could be gathered together. We headed home in defeat.

Luckily, on the walk home, we found a pristine parking lot, that appeared to be full of snow. (It only “appeared” to be because there weren’t any inch-long blades of grass sticking up to ruin the effect). Alden and Kato decided to make big Qs in the snow (a tradition started in a different parking lot, on a bike, making Qs by driving through puddles and having the tire tracks turn into Qs when we rode in circles around the perimeter).

Qs can go either way, apparently.

Or, they can just stop in the middle and collect snowflakes on their tongues.

At a certain point, Kato stopped and wondered why we weren’t making Ks for Kato. He gave it a shot.

It turns out, there’s a reason one makes Qs. They are much less complicated.

But by some happy accident, all of this running turned the Qs and the K into this:

A kind of a gimpy star. And I guess when all is said and done, running around in your non-snowsuit with your little bro in the back parking lot of the hotel across the street as the sun sets and the streetlights turn on is worth, at least, a kind of a gimpy star.