snow + ice

Now that it has all melted, I'll commemorate the "arctic blast" of 2013. Let me preface for my readers that aren't so familiar with the Pacific Northwest, we don't get a lot of snow in the valley. In Eugene, Oregon we're only an hour away from the snowy mountains and that's where we go to experience large amounts of snow. Our usual winter is very wet and when we get snow it is still very wet and usually February or even March. Imagine our surprise when we were having temperatures in the teens and then woke up to a few inches of snow last Friday, dry + powdery made-for-tv type snow. Instead of melting by 10am, it just kept snowing. It snowed at our house nonstop for over 12 hours. It was glorious!

It was a blast to play in. If you follow Ben or myself on Instagram or Facebook you might have seen some slow motion videos Ben captured that day. If not, they're work a look!

We had a cozy morning watching the snow drift down like a fairytale while Ben made waffles (yes, I'm  a blessed wife) and sipped our hot coffees and snuggled the boys close. Desmond loved watching it come down, Kai was surprised but asked to go back to bed after we showed him it had snowed. Not the reaction we were expecting, but he warmed up quickly.

Just before lunch we ventured outside to play. It was about 17 degrees out, getting the boys layered took just about forever for about 15 minutes of play time. It was worth it though. 

Later that afternoon we bundled up again and decided to take a walk down to the park. It has snowed so much more that we sank into snow and didn't touch the ground, which was so surreal in our own neighborhood. 

Des in the snow around 11am, and again around 4pm…quite a bit deeper!

I laughed as I watched kids running down the street with snowboards, a total first for me. There is a big hill at the park so they were taking advantage. 

Ben + Des headed straight for the teeter totters and then all 3 of them tried out swinging in the snow. We were only there for about 5 minutes because it had taken so long to get there in the cold, it was getting dark, and a bunch of cold wind was blowing. We trekked home for hot cocoa and dinner.

The next day it was no longer snowing but the temperatures had fallen below 0 so everything stayed pretty well preserved. We went out to the park again, taking the wagon this time. 

 

It was interesting to see the difference between the night before and that morning. I took this shot of the same area of field next to the park…

My little dare-devils tried to play on the slide and climb the icy equipment until we distracted them with the deep snow and attempting to build a snowman. At one point Desmond started crawling around in the snow and laughing hysterically

The snow was too powdery to build a snowman at that point, which was just fine as the boys got cold enough to come in fairly quickly. In fact, I began to suspect that they just wanted to play outside so they could have hot cocoa when they came back in. 

We spent most of Sunday inside, but Ben + Kai played out front together during Desmond's nap. Kai had a blast throwing the snow at a tree and watching it stick. He also helped daddy shovel the snow from the side walk. 

Tuesday I made an attempt to take the boys in the snow on my own. Yep, it was still here. It was like it had snowed the day before, not 3 days ago. We just kept getting freezing weather that preserved it. It took 45 minutes for me to get them and myself suited up for the 20 degree chill. We kicked around out back and then attempted a snowman, but Des kicked it down. We tried again, but he was more of a snow-mound. It's hard to pack powdery snow. Kai gave him a big eye that looked like a patch so we decided he was a pirate. Then we went in of cocoa, naturally. 

The rest of the week we just observed the snow from inside. Enjoying it's bright glow and watching the birds eat the berries off the trees out back. Last night it "warmed" up and the rain finally came, turning the snow into quite the ugly mess outside. It's incredible how quickly snow disappears when it rains. 

We thoroughly enjoyed our winter wonderland, thanks Alaska, for sharing your weather.