Baby, it's cold outside

Here in Canada's Banana Belt, it is normally still raining at this time of year. We very rarely have a white Christmas and in fact normally only get a couple of good snowfalls each year.

This year, for some crazy reason, it started snowing during the third week of November and hasn't stopped since. We haven't seen our grass in more than a month. There will probably be some cruel twist of fate that sees this snow all melting right before Christmas, just so we don't get the benefit of it over the holidays; but with 9 days to go, we have about 8 inches on the ground (and on the roof of our back porch, which I'm certain is going to collapse at any minute).

So yesterday, in the midst of the latest storm, Liam and I decided to head outside. It seems that it's never as cold while it's snowing as it is on those sunny winter days that look nice, but are deceptively frigid. The temperature yesterday was hovering right around the freezing mark. So we went outside for an hour, and this is what we accomplished.

Although the prospect of bundling Liam up and getting him out there didn't thrill me, and I waffled on it for most of the afternoon before finally doing it, I am so glad that I did. Because getting him into his snowsuit, I am learning, is not nearly as difficult as getting him into his winter coat. And because Liam, the kid who is normally so serious that he borders on surly, laughed his head off the entire time I was building this snowman. Despite being under the weather, he had a ball. (Not that I was able to catch him smiling on film... as usual.) The only downfall to this whole deal is that I built the snowman right outside our back door, and it gave me a spook more than once last night when I passed by the kitchen window and was certain someone was lurking in our back yard, momentarily forgetting that the spook was one we had built ourselves.