Of Snow and Snowmen (and Exercise : )

This post is over three weeks too late, since the snowstorm was three Sundays ago (2/12)... but, better late than never, I guess! I am long overdue posting some pictures, so I'll do that here as well. (note: I started writing this post on 2/22 so you can see how long I take to finally get to post things - my desire to post multiple pictures doesn't help much : )

I love snow, it's just so beautiful! For me snow makes all the cold of winter "worth it" in a visible manner, since we don't have it often (not even in Massachusetts we had snow very often during the winter). The first time I saw snow was in October 1996, when I was 24 years old. It was actually only some "flurries," as they call just a slight dusting of snow here, but we took tons of pictures! Then, in time I learned to dread driving in the snow, cleaning our car, walking on slushy, brown and dirty looking streets and sidewalks, and I thought snow was troublesome some times.

Every year, however, I couldn't wait for the first snow to fall. I marked my calendars, wrote down the dates in my diaries, took pictures and filmed sometimes: October 20 1996; early December 1997; December 30 1998; October 13 2000; January 11 2002; OK, I can't remember anything from them on, because becoming a mommy ruins your memory completely!

So, I was very happy when there was a forecast for a big storm, and right on the weekend too, Saturday night and Sunday, when the whole family could be cozy at home! With my husband recovering from surgery, I had to be the one to shovel, so I went outside, already a bit late in the afternoon, as you can see from the pictures, which are a bit dark. I thought it was funny how the snow piled in a gravity defying way in the back of our minivan (the strong winds did that). My son soon joined me and started playing with the shoveled snow.













I really enjoy shoveling snow! Now I have to confess that I am a very sedentary person, I don't exercise at all and feel very ashamed about it because I know my body needs to be active, etc... Thing is, I can't do it on my own, I need to belong to a gym (something I never did in my life) or sign up for classes at the YMCA (we plan to join this summer). The only times I had some kind of regular exercise were the 2 semesters in college I took a gymnastics class, and the two semesters in grad school I signed up for figure skating class (I'm no good at either, but I love these sports). Oh, yeah, I do like hiking, rollerblading, and riding a bike and we'd do those things once in a while in Massachusetts, but never regularly. When I am outdoors doing something useful, however, gardening, shoveling snow, or even mowing the lawn, I just love it!
Too bad those things don't provide enough exercise for me... Can you see how happy I am shoveling my driveway?

One last thing, can you believe I had never made a snowman in my almost 10 years living in the U.S.? First, we lived in rental apartments for 5 of those years and then, we owned a townhouse with only a small cemented patio, and I didn't think it was fun to make a snow man in the lawn at the back of the house. This is the first time we have a front lawn and backyard, so I decided to make a snowman (motivated my the neighbor two doors down who was making one with her daughter). But one was not enough, and I went ahead and made two! My son helped a little bit, but not too much - he really wanted to go and smash the snowmen to the ground because that's what he did all summer with any sandcastles I tried to build, but I told him he COULD NOT do that to my very first snowmen, that they'd melt and he wouldn't need to smash them.

Here we are with the finished snow men, the sun was almost setting then, and it was getting pretty cold!

Two Three more pictures, OK? I have really gone on a picture-posting-binge today (and there'll be more later, probably tomorrow, so watch out!).

Here they are basking melting in the sun of the next day.

This is the view from our front door, on the day of the storm and the next day (I'm just mesmerized... every. single. time. by the beauty of snow and blue skies...)

Note: Did you notice that earlier this week I added a Flickr badge to the blog's sidebar? I'd wanted to do that in ages. I was also able to put a "goals" and "to-do" list there as well...