It’s Saturday morning. Snow is falling and I’m making pancakes.
Toward the end of 2021 I felt like I wouldn’t continue my weekly highlight posts into 2022 but the closer I got to 2022 and now that we’re a week in to this new year, I have realized I would miss these regular connections and I’d like to continue them. I may not post exactly every week and I am still figuring out what exactly I want to share here. As my kids get older, I am always considering exactly how much of our family life to share. In the meantime though, I’m glad to be here and I hope each of you has had a good start to the new year.
This week was supposed to be back to school but the re-start of school in British Columbia was delayed by one week. So while Peter went back to work on Tuesday, Pearl was at home with me and Rose. Pearl loves school and was disappointed not to return so I made up a little schedule for our days. We had reading time, writing (for Pearl) and letter (for Rose) practise. We had recess in the backyard and did simple experiments and did some math. Some of it I just made up and some of it was from some workbooks I already had for them. It helped give our days structure and the girls mostly seemed to enjoy it.
On Thursday it snowed heavily and Peter had a snow day. We met some friends at the local park for sledding and ended up hanging out there for over 2 hours! Peter and I thought for sure the girls wouldn’t last that long but they had a blast. This snow was more like the snow we’re used to here on the West Coast than the snow we had in December. It also wasn’t as cold, closer to 0 degrees than -10. The snow was wetter and better for packing down too which meant we actually spend most of that morning building giant snowballs and snow forts. This park is where every kid in our neighbourhood seems to show up when it snows and it’s always fun to see everyone.
The snow this morning doesn’t seem to be sticking but it makes me grateful for our warm and cozy home, that we have each other, and the community around us.
Do you get much snow where you live? Is it the powdery kind that makes for good sledding or is the wetter kind that makes awesome snow forts?
Karissa Reads Books 
I enjoy your weekly highlight posts but appreciate your concern over how much of your family’s personal life to share.
As for your question about snow, I am in my fifties and have only seen snow four times. The first time was when I was in primary school. The teachers let all of the children go out onto the oval to look at it. There wasn’t enough to cover the ground but it was very exciting!
The other times I’ve seen snow have been on trips to Australia’s snowfields. Twice we hired gear and skied (I took a lesson and managed to ski!!!) and another time we arrived and there was only a small patch of man-made snow so we hired toboggans and had an afternoon of climbing a small hill, sliding down, climbing the hill again and so on. One of us got snow in our clothing and complained about our day out ever-after!
I had no idea there was such an area as Australia’s snowfields! Is it usually real snow there or is manmade pretty common? Snow is enough of a novelty here that I can recall kids rushing to the windows if it ever started to snow while we were at school.
Australia’s snowfields are in NSW and Victoria and most years they get enough snow to keep the skiers and snowboarders happy. The first weekend in June is the official beginning of the snow season although there isn’t always snow!
It wasn’t snowing at Christmastime, but now it is — just in time for back to school when I have to drive so far! Oh, well. I do enjoy your updates. Even if you don’t share about your family in particular, maybe more about how you’re doing or what you’ve been thinking about, that’s nice. I also wonder if this is almost like a diary for you, something you can look back on one day, or if your blog persists, something Rose and Pearl can read one day.
I like being able to share too and it is kind of neat having this record of my kids growing up. Just pondering the best way to continue to do so while respecting the fact that one day they will be able to read it!
I knew one author who wouldn’t even use her kid’s name online because she wanted to respect it (him/her? don’t know). But as the child gets older, all that goes out the window as family share photos and stories and don’t ask for permission because social media becomes an extension of our real lives.
I’ve seen bloggers do that too. I’m lucky that we’ve never had the issue of some family member posting our kid all over social media. They’re all pretty respectful and if they do share a picture they always check first. My brother has teenagers now so it’s kind of nice watching how they navigate social media and all that in their family and thinking about how I want to handle that when my kids are older.
There are a couple of bloggers I’ve been in contact with for years whose first names I do not know!
I know a couple like that too!
It’s a tricky issue, how much to share online, especially as the children get a bit older. I think I’d tend to err on the side of caution. You never can tell what kinds of things other kids could use for bullying purposes and I think we sometimes underestimate kids’ skill and desire to search stuff out about people they know online. (I am of course paranoid, having worked with kids with behavioural difficulties!) But I hope you find a way to continue these posts at a level you feel comfortable with! Wet snow for snowman building purposes mainly, here, I think, though we did used to go sledding occasionally as kids.
It’s all a brand new world, raising kids with the internet and social media. Mainly I think about safety and not putting anything out in the world that will embarrass my children.
When I was a kid, since snow was pretty rare, we did something called ice-blocking. We would get big blocks of ice and sit on them to slide down grassy hills instead of sledding!
Haha, I hope you wore thick trousers!
I miss playing in the snow with the kids. I used to do it all the time! We usually get the packy kind of snow here. Now that they’re older, though, we can take them snowshoeing instead!
We snowshoed with them when they were little enough to carry but I think we have a couple more years before they can both do it on their own! In the meantime, we have a blast sledding and building snow forts so I’ll keep enjoying it while I can!