Thursday, January 29, 2009

What Are The Chances...

What are the chances that a little boy, covered in snow and cold, 20 minutes walk from home - would fall into a puddle of melted snow about 60 seconds after mom had just given him a dry, warm pair of mittens?

We ended up taking a "snow day" yesterday. DH decided to take a "snow day" - so the rest of us did the same. The girl was a big help in clearing the driveway, the boy mainly played in the snow.

I walked to the post office (about a 20 min walk) carrying a few parcels to be mailed, hoping that I wouldn't get to the post office and find it closed. It wasn't. Just as I got to the end of our street and crossed the road I saw "the pedestrian". "The pedestrian" is one of two or three regular road walkers that we see and we generally call out (in the car) "I see the pedestrian" when we see a particular pedestrian...almost like a game who can see him first because, come rain or shine (or snow) he is out walking.

Well I was in a bit of a dilemma - there was no available sidewalk to walk on - it all being covered in snow so I was going to have to walk on the road and there was the pedestrian walking on the road. I've always been a bit scared of him b/c he usually looks angry and is constantly talking/muttering out loud to himself. Should I hurry up and pass him and walk in front of him or slow down and walk 2 paces behind him.

Being a fast walker - I decided to pass him. Then I realized that he was actually talking to me - some of it I couldn't understand - some of it was commenting on all the snow. So I replied and walked on.

After I went to the post office I popped into the grocery store and bought a few things - none of which included bread, milk or eggs.

When I got home, or perhaps on the way home, I started to think about us going on a family walk. And what better place to walk to on a snowful day - but to McDonalds. We wanted to walk out in the beautiful snow and enjoy it while it is here but for a brief day or two and I thought it would be nice to also pop in at the library - which is about a 15 min walk from McDonalds.

It wasn't really all that cold out (and definitely mild by Manitoba standards)...

Speaking of McDonalds - it wasn't that long ago that the boy could never finish his hamburger Happy Meal. Usually his fries were left behind - which made the girl happy. But now he's eating all his meal and even wanting some extra fries! He's definitely growing.

When we finally made it to the library midst much snow and slush - we found it CLOSED!!! What on earth! As we were leaving the parking lot (unplowed) we noticed the girl had lost her hat so we backtracked and found it outside Big Lots store. Coming back that way, pops decided he'd like to pop into Cummins Tools. Neither the kids nore I were too thrilled about poking around in there so we decided to head on home. But we got sidetracked.

In the parking lot was a huge snow "mountain" made by the snowplows. It definitely brought back memories from my childhood...I can even picture one particular snow mountain outside the parking lot of the old TomBoy grocery store.

I was kind of worried some snowplow driver would come and yell at us for messing with his mountain - but decided to let the kids play on it anyway. They had great fun! I wish the mountain was in our backyard instead of 20 min from home, so the kids could have played on it to their hearts' delight...I didn't want them to get too cold and too wet b/c of the walk home - so we finally went back into Cummins to wait for pops. Then coming out of Cummins is when the boy fell into the pool of melted water, soaking his dry, bright red woolen mittens and his britches.

Que Sera, Sera...

2 comments:

TheSaxonHus said...

Yeah, the good old days when you could feed your family with Happy Meals. Wait until every family member wants an extra value meal, LARGE!!!!

Watch your wallets!

Heather said...

yup, I can imagine that happening. In our case the giant mound of snow plowed snow is in our front yard where my dad left it for the kids.