The real thing!

We'd like to introduce you to the newest member of our family. He is as big as Rachel, bigger in some ways, and came to us today with only a scarf to his name. He is very lovely, and hopefully will be here for a little while.

Please meet Snow Bear. :o)



It started snowing yesterday, and clearly did a lot over night (a lot for here anyway) as we woke up to 15cm of snow this morning. The thing I noticed straight away was the beautiful silence! Even in the very early hours of the morning there is no silence here - always cars going past on one of the nearby main roads, or all three. There was traffic apparently, but it was going so slowly I couldn't hear a thing - how lovely that was (for me at least)! Michael saw one lorry backing down the road outside. Presumably it hadn't been able to make it up over the hill at the top, as it gets quite steep there.





The children were very excited and of course couldn't wait to get outside. Michael would have been out playing with them, but had to go to uni so walked in today (not suitable weather for riding) only to find it was closed. He was disappointed art first as he enjoys the computer programming-type class he has on a Monday (biological modelling really but near enough he same!) When he got over that though, and explained a few things to me he's been learning about, we went outside to build a snowman at the front. The children had exhausted themselves playing outside the back in the morning - mostly a big snowball fight that well and truly trampled the snow down in the back garden. Peter was so funny to watch joining in with that. He had snowballs (or snow piles) just as big as the others and was throwing them at everyone, and laughing loudly when other people hit him with theirs. He had told me while watching the snow yesterday that snow is really nice. He clearly does enjoy it.





So with everyone sort of snowed out really, we were joined by only Rebekah to start with , followed by the others one t a time as they realised what fun we were having. :o) Once Rachel was outside she started with the snowballs again, but she did help us to get the snowman head and body we had rolled from the driveway up a wooden plank ramp and down into the garden where he would be nice and safe. The three of us together couldn't even get the body off the ground it was so heavy, but the seesaw-type ramp worked nicely. :o)

We decided in the end he looked more like a bear with his big snout, and we gave Peter the last vote (he had just decided to join us). A bear he wanted, so a bear he became. There were a flurry of snowballs flying around - Daddy versus children once everyone was outside. I stayed out of the way and finished the bear's face as I didn't fancy slipping over since we had pretty much packed down the rest of the snow that was left. It was fun to watch though. I was joined by Peter after a while who soon worked out how to add snow to the big bear's body. So he got lots of little lumpy mounds all over him after that, and Peter enjoyed himself immensely helping make the bear.














One thing we wondered about as we rolled our big snowballs was whether the left behind TO LET signs would make good sledges. They seemed slippery enough. So once the bear was made, we tried it out from the gate at the back down the driveway. It goes straight down to the road, but not steeply, and while Michael started people off at the top I stood a bit up from the pavement to stop those who might go a bit too fast to stop. It worked really well and there were several times I had someone hurtling right at me!







Rebekah was the best on it - hurtling down the drive in a straight line on most goes. It was getting quite dark by the time we finished and everyone was clearly exhausted. Nice that Daddy got a play day today. :o)







New Note (Friday 5th February):

We just got back from registering with a new doctor (not too happy with the first one we registered with here). On the way back we saw lots of snowman bodies left over, the rest having melted. Then when we got home, Peter wasn't ready to go inside yet -- he was bothered about the state of our snowbear. So he and I took advantage of the fact that we had made such a big snowbear in the first place, and reshaped him into a little snowman - about two years old I'd say as he's a little smaller than Peter. S snow boy I suppose then, and a happy one at that - probably the smartest in Brighton right now. :o)