The Stay at Home Mother

This weekend, the Lower Mainland was hit by a rather large snow fall. Yesterday, we stuck close to home and the kids just played in the snow in our backyard. And of course, we hung up our Christmas decorations in the evening.

Today, we ventured out a few blocks in our car to the local Mall to pick up some essentials. We also had a snow ball fight in the backyard and nestled in close to our fire place afterwards. Days like this make me think about life on the Prairies as a child and how snow was so common place (as it lasted for almost six months of the year) and how by tomorrow all of this snow here in White Rock, will be mostly melted away....

It also made me remember how it used to get down to -47 with the wind chill. I grew up in that kind of weather, and yet, once I moved here, I climatized awefully quickly....and before you knew it, when the weather would be nearing zero, I would be chilled to the bone. I forgot about the type of weather on the Prairies, that your skin would freeze in less than a minute if exposed to the elements...frost bite was just a way of life in the winter.

But it was still fun for me to grow up with so much snow as a child...I never thought it was a bad thing. And nothing on the Prairies ever closed down if it snowed...that would be silly. And keeping your car running while you popped in to the local store for some groceries was sometimes a necessity - because if you didn't, your car may not turn over and start again...that's why you plug your car in at night so that they engine will stay warm and will run in the morning.

But my children will never experience cold like that (unless we somehow find ourselves visiting during the winter months). They will just know Vancouver snow, which lasts for a few days and then melts away with the rain. And as a parent who had known that kind of cold, I prefer it just fine here on the West Coast, where snow is a rare and beautiful occurance...and that the worst this weather can do to us is make our cheeks rosey...not freeze our skin with numbing pain. Nope...don't miss that part at all. ;)