Iris' first day playing out and Esther's Snowperson

So even though we live in a land of snow 8 months of the year, very rarely is it snow fit for making things -- snowmen, snowwomen, snow castles, etc. -- because it's often very dry snow, and the wind whips up what is not hard-packed. However, we had a really warm wind storm this month that brought the temperatures up to near 32 degrees (and a little bit over, because we had some RAIN for a couple hours before it dipped below again), and a bunch of wonderful, wet, malleable snow fell. Esther has been dying to make snow creations, so I told her we were going to seize the moment to do so, and to take advantage of the warm temps to take Iris out to play in the snow for the first time!

Here is Esther pushing a big snowball up the hill:


Iris was NOT excited at first to sit down in the snow:But then soon realized it was cool and different:Especially when she got to hang out with big sister!

The finished snowperson (Esther said it was a girl AND a boy snowperson. Great!):For lack of fresh produce, we used candy to decorate, and the hard candies promptly sunk far back into the snow, producing gross brown stains for buttons. It's ok, Esther loved it anyway, as you can see in this picture of Esther loving up her snowgirlboy (as a thinly veiled strategem for munching on the licorice nose -- she insisted she was just "kissing" its nose...)Nice one, babe!