Family Life

New Year’s Day, 2008, and we had our second snowfall of the winter. Beautiful, thick, deep snow, pure white. My first thought was to send the boys out to play. Debbie loves to shovel, so she could go out and clear the driveway while keeping an eye on the boys, and maybe I’d get a quiet morning to myself. This year was turning out well!

As I gazed out the window, our neighbour went by with his snowblower, clearing the sidewalk. That’s when I faced a moral dilemma: I could go out and ask to borrow the snowblower, and clear our driveway in twenty minutes with little effort, or I could leave Debbie to shovel (she likes it, remember?) and it would be an hour or two of heavy labour (but not my labour). Sigh!

I put on coat, gloves, hat and boots, and went out and borrowed the snowblower. By the time I had finished the driveway Debbie had suited up the boys and sent them outside. I spent the rest of the morning playing with the boys in our front yard. I’d sit a boy in our snow saucer and nudge him over the edge and down the hill, then I’d haul the saucer back to the top.

The saucer went pretty fast once a track had worn into the snow. Joel got a bit scared of the speed, and begged me to go with him. This is a saucer sized for a six-year-old. It’s quite large and stable for Joel (2), but quite tiny and top-heavy for me. Balancing myself on the saucer was tricky. Balancing Joel on top made it worse. But we did it. Joel loved it. This was great fun! He was safe because Daddy was with him. I didn’t feel all that safe, personally, but we had fun all the same. The worst that could happen was we’d fall off and I’d get wet and cold. Joel would be fine. Only his eyes and nose were peeking out of his snowsuit.

The neighbour’s oldest son came out to play, and Daniel invited him in for lunch. I told Daniel he’d better ask Debbie’s permission, and she in turn phoned next door and invited the whole family over for lunch.

We had a nice, companionable, leisurely lunch. It was a bit rowdy with four energetic boys, plus baby Micah, but fun. A good visit with our kind neighbours. A good way to start the year.

Photo note: that’s a multi-shot sequence combined into one, and it’s not in my front yard.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 9:24 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.