List #18

Well isn’t this cool? List #18 is coming out on December 18. I just noticed that…neat! Anyway…moving right along…

In honor of the beautiful snow that continues to fall in my little neck of the woods, I thought that today’s “Friday List” could be about that flaky white stuff. Growing up in the mountains of Western NC and living there again today, I have many fond snow memories. My memories of winter wonderlands extend beyond the borders of NC, as well. You can fairly say that I’ve seen quite a bit of the stuff in my lifetime. I have so many snowy memories, so today I’m sharing a list of ten of them. How about you? Have you had the privilege of making snow memories? I’d love to hear them!

As of this morning, this is what we’ve been blessed with. Lots more is on the way!

Now for the list!

Ten memories of snow:

1. When I was a child, school wasn’t cancelled for snow very often. It had to be a big snowfall for that to happen. (I guess people weren’t as law suit happy back then.) I remember my mother driving us to school one morning, and the car slid all over the place. As children, we thought it was fun to slip and slide along the snowy roads. I know better now.
2. I actually experienced my biggest snowfall in recent years while living in Charlotte, NC (not the snowy NC mountains). It was in the winter of 2003-2004, and we received around 18 inches of snow in our part of the city. Very rare for that part of the state. I was at work that morning, and they let us go home early on account of the weather. It took me 3 hours to drive a mile and a half!
3. I remember my parents making us snow cream for yummy sweet treats!
4. We were visiting relatives in Nebraska one Christmas season right after they had a huge blizzard. To date, this was the most snow I had seen in any one place at one time.
5. During the same Nebraska trip, I walked with my parents to the lake behind our relatives house. People were ice skating on it! I thought that was so cool, because in NC, the lakes rarely froze solid enough to be safe to skate on.
6. Another Nebraska memory…because the land was so flat, sleds were not as popular as they are in the NC mountains. However, snowmobiles were everywhere – such fun!
7. One last Nebraska story (I promise)…my mother was walking around in the snow in the back of the house and fell into a 4+ foot snow drift. First, let me say – she wasn’t hurt – just embarrassed. Anyway, when we saw her – we laughed so hard we cried (including my dad). All you could see of my mother was her from the neck up. She just looked so funny, and she was not very happy that we were standing there laughing. But…we did help her get out!
8. My daughter has a January birthday. Needless to say, it snows sometimes in January where we live. We were celebrating her 3rd birthday with family that had driven in from out of town. It started snowing blankets, and everybody got snowed in with us in our little house. The snow was pretty…but guests got cranky being all squished up after awhile. We can laugh about it now.
9. I have many, many sledding memories during childhood. Thankfully – no bones were ever broken.
10. This snow memory requires a little explanation first, so bear with me. Our closest friends tragically lost their 8-yr-old son in 1993. For years, they would always stay home on Christmas, because they needed to just be together on that day especially and preferred to do so in the privacy of their home. However, they decided by the Christmas of 1998 that it would be okay for them to leave home for the first time. They came to spend Christmas with us, but they were still unsettled about leaving home. They prayed that God would send them a Christmas snow to assure them they were making the right decision and that everything would be okay. As we awoke that Christmas morning, snow flurries were falling from the sky. It wasn’t a big snowfall by any stretch, but it was enough!