Snow Days & A Beautiful Beginning to 2022

 The first week of the 2022 gave us in Kentucky the best gift this year—winter came!

And as you can see, we were ready for it!!!

Hallelujah for the Lord giving us a whole day of watching beautiful, fluffy, snow fall!!!

After a December that felt way more like a terrible case of the worst of spring with an F-5 tornado, flash flooding, and warm gray days, we deserved a cold, seasonal white winter to enjoy.

Right at about 5-6 inches, our area received a perfect blanket of snow that came in the form of big fluffy flakes that began in the early morning with the sunrise (somewhere behind the snow clouds) and ended mid afternoon. It fell gracefully throughout the day, the perfect way to watch it fall from swollen snow clouds to the frozen ground. It stuck right away! 

Truly, I don't know if me or the kids were more excited! 

We gathered all the snow gear we could find and all the warm hats and gloves and scarves for it was honestly bitter cold, but our excitement kept us outside over 15 minutes! 

Tiny tongues caught snowflakes, snowballs were thrown, snow angels made.

It’s a lot of dedication for moms to get everyone all layered up and ready from head to toe, including ourselves, and bundled like Ralphie and Randy from the Christmas Story! When it’s 11 degrees outside, every inch is covered in at least four layers here! Why, in just a matter of moments we are back inside and dropping clothes on the rugs in the mud room and setting them in front of the electric fireplace we have in there to dry before our next outing.  

It’s a lot, yes, but once I’m out in the brisk air and feel the snowflakes on my own cheeks I come alive!! I understand why kids love snow so much, because I still love playing in the snow!

          

This snowfall came with brutal temps so the outside play may have been few, but that means we come in for mugs of hot cocoa, which I enjoy making from the Hershey’s recipe on the cocoa container. I also add a handful of marshmallows to melt in the cocoa on the stove and then top with even more fluffy marshmallows in the mug! Perfect to sip while watching a movie. Later I had a deliciously fresh cup of my favorite Starbuck Christmas blend coffee in one of my favorite mugs, my brother Taylor brought home for me from Washington D.C. There’s nothing like warm sippers in hand and cozy blankets to snuggle under on snow days!

In these cozy pictures you’ll still see our Christmas trees still up from Christmas, but now we have everything put away at this point except a few twinkle lights to liven up the long winter nights. I’ve learned that gives me joy!

I’m so glad the Christmas trees were still up so we could enjoy the snowfall and the twinkling lights together! We rarely ever get December snowfalls like this, although I remember vividly a few Christmas snows growing up.. the last was the year we married in 2004. It felt like a perfect Christmas miracle! 

I gathered the kids and read to them a new precious book my sister gifted them for Chrismas about Jesus. They played while I read. I don’t read to them all as much as I used to or as much as I would like to, but when I do it warms my heart so much! 

The following day I awoke to a glistening white outside, and I knew I absolutely had to bundle up and get back in the frosty snow globe of a world. 

The sun made the snow crunch under our feet!

Rosemary and I played in our yard while the big kids snow boarded down the neighborhood hill nearby. We had such a good time!! 

My big two probably walked up that hill a dozen times or more so they came back in cold, tired and wanted to zone out on the couch with a movie.

Being this is only the second or third measurable snowfall since we lived in this house, I’m still in awe of how pretty everything looks. The edges of the reflective pond were frozen while the rest were smooth as glass, as you can see.

In the surrounding woods, every single branch and limb, highlighted. 

Our home looks dreamy dressed in winter white, so I had to snap some pictures to remember just how pretty she looks!

To cap off an already exciting week, we took the kids to the movies to see Sing 2 the following day once the roads were fine to travel on, and we had a sweet “date night” with our kids, which we haven’t done in months! Cheesy Pagliai’s Pizza was devoured in our favorite corner booth after the movie and then a visit to my my grandparents’ home in town topped off the night with extra joy!

It really has been a very full and busy month, but this new year, so far, has been abundant in the Lord’s favor and blessings on our family! 

The busy hasn’t been stressful like it can be sometimes, but instead it’s been refreshing~all good things. Have we had changes to adjust to? Yes, definitely! But also I’ve carved out time with some of my favorite people, that’s been long over-due because of different factors over the course of the last 12-18 months. 

Many of you know I have taken a break from social media. It’s not only helped me focus to get everything done but enjoy it all to the full and be completely present!! I needed to simplify some things for a bit and for me that starts with the clutter I carry in my mind. 

I really want to remember this peaceful season and listen to all the Lord is speaking to me. He is speaking, and moving, and in our family He is redeeming what the locusts had eaten in the previous year!! 

His great faithfulness is like the morning sun!!!