Snow Day

Our morning began at 6:00 a.m. sharp, which is when Annie has been starting her day lately. We woke up to almost a foot of snow that had fallen in the previous few hours; schools everywhere (including hers) were closed for the day. She cried for about thirty seconds about missing her Gingerbread party, then moved on to making new plans for the day. Since we really, truly couldn't go anywhere in the car, our options were limited to our neighborhood. We invited Heidi and Jonathan over to hang out for the morning. It was nice; grownups drank coffee and talked, kids ran around and self-amused for over an hour. After that, we braved the outdoors. The girls absolutely loved all the snow (it came up to Annie's mid-thigh, and Jemma couldn't even walk in it except where it had been trampled down by feet or shovels). Jason and I sort of loved it, too, party because it felt a whole lot like the infamous winters of our childhood, the ones where people ventured out only via snowmobile and babies were born after dramatic drives to the hospital.

The rest of the day, we played inside, drank hot cocoa, danced, drew, took a big walk outside right down the middle of streets, and made Christmas cookies. I used a sugar cookie recipe of Nigella Lawson's from my How To Be A Domestic Goddess cookbook. The dough turned out sort of sticky, the baked cookies tasted fine, but my favorite part of the recipe was her statement at the end regarding letting children ice them in all different colors of frosting: "Let the artistic spirit be your guide, remembering with gratitude that children have very bad taste." Indeed. Annie dumped half a pound of pale pink sanding sugar on her Christmas tree cookie after dotting it with green sprinkles; Jemma chose hot pink for hers. They were very excited about the project, though, and for the second time today I felt transported back to my childhood, doing something I'd done over and over as a kid, now with kids of my own.

Now they're snugly in bed, and Jason and I are readying ourselves to decorate batch #2 of the grown-up-made cookies. This kind of decorating is a different kind of fun than the chaos with the girls - more alcohol, less flour on the floor, and colors that actually go together.

***Post amended (and first two photos added) to show that, upon going back downstairs after writing this post, Jason was found deeply involved in some decidedly un-manly cookie-decorating while listening to Christmas music by Wham! As you can see from the photos, he was getting a little carried away.