Last Friday, we woke up to a blanket of fresh snow. I had heard rumblings of expected snow mixed with rain in the days prior, but I’ll admit I thought that meant mostly rain with a few miniscule snowflakes mixed in — after all it was still September. Little did I know that when northern Wyoming says snow, it means snow.
Not tiny little flakes you can barely see, but enough to go sledding
and to build snowmen…even in a month that ought to be full of crunching leaves and pumpkins.
I was a little surprised, but I figured we’d just go with the flow. We dug out winter gear for Zara (thankfully I had ordered Nora’s the week before), played in the snow, listened to Christmas carols, and drank coconut hot cocoa. It all felt like a fun September surprise which promptly (and thankfully) melted away into a few more days of fall.
Silly me, I thought last week was a fluke.
No, I am learning that all the talk I heard about Wyoming having two seasons — summer and winter — was no exaggeration. Last night the snow started back up again, and it snowed all day today, dumping more than a foot of snow, possibly even two.
We stayed snuggled up in the house most of the day watching a movie, eating popcorn, and generally doing things that I would expect from a December Friday, not an October one.
Then around 4:00, we decided to go outside and shovel the driveway for Chris (who owes me big time — that was hard!). Nora mostly played and Zara supervised from the garage while I managed to get half the driveway done before getting worn out.
I made a new resolution today: no matter the weather, we are going to spend at least 30 minutes outside every day. Anywhere else, that resolution would sound ridiculous and unnecessary, but I am realizing how much I miss all the outside time we had in Nantucket walking to everything and that I had fallen into a rut of only going out on nice days. I’m not sure yet that I can do much about all the time we spend in the car, but I’m going to do what I can to make sure we get plenty of fresh air and exercise even with what is shaping up to be a very long winter.
I put together a little film of our fun last week. Enjoy!