The First Snow

 It happened right after Halloween.  It snowed.  We had just finished lunch, and I had just put Rex down for his nap.  Roanin looked out the window to see huge wet snowflakes floating down.

 By the time Rexy woke up, it had just about stopped...but that didn't stop us from getting in our gear and heading out to check it out. 

 They were more than impressed.  They tried pitifully to put together snowballs with which to hit me with, and even tried to scrape together a poor snowman.  Although there wasn't really enough for all of that - it was fun to be out and welcome winter. 

It was so crazy...this snow.  Although we lived in Idaho, where it snows quite a bit, this snow was different.  It actually made me freak out a little bit.  And after fretting around and worrying if we are "winter ready" and stressing about whether I know how to do everything I do in the snow, it hit me.  This was the first time the full reality of us living here set in.  It was like the last 5 months I have been able to sort of limp along and exist like things have always been.  Without knowing it, I was equating the climate with my life.  With our lives.  It was almost the same, and so I didn't feel the overwhelming change that we had indeed been through.  But the flakes did it.  They made me think about the fact that we are in a different place.  Doing different things.  Doing things we haven't done before, with people we haven't known before.  We have closed a chapter of our lives and have opened a new one.  With the transition, we have lost a lot, and gained even more.  We are different.  I am different.  My future is going to be different.  Seeing all the snow led me to think of how I will learn to deal with a true winter.  How I will drive in 4-wheel-drive.  How you don't turn on your windshield wipers when it is below freezing outside (I broke one already).  How I will spend 30 minutes just getting the boys dressed to go outside.  How I will have to wear a coat...for like 5 months.  How we will shovel our driveway, and burn fires in our fireplace.  How my boys will grow up with the memory of white Christmases and sledding.  How they will have the knowledge of this life, like it is how it has always been.  But it hasn't always been this way.  It was different. 

And just like I will learn the ways of a Midwestern winter, I will also learn the ways of my new life.  The perspective I choose to take, the people I let in, and the path that is in front of me. 

And after I realized it, I was fine.  I was better than fine.  I was excited.  So excited about this life we are carving out and molding into what we want it to be. I was thrilled at the thought that we are taking charge of our family and our future and demanding it be all that it can be.

And with that I say....bring on the snow.