Snow Day!

This weekend we decided to take a day trip up to Flagstaff and show the kids snow for the first time. We had been telling Joshua throughout the week that we were going to go see the snow on Saturday. On Wednesday he woke up convinced that today was the day we were going to the snow. He was devastated when he learned the sad truth... that he would need to wait 3 more days. But thankfully, he survived the disappointment.

We left for our trip at about 8:30 a.m. We were about 40 miles or so outside of Flagstaff and still hadn't seen one little patch of snow. We started to get a little concerned, even though I had confirmed with the visitor's bureau the day before that all of the recreation areas were still covered in the white stuff. But about 5 minutes later, we started to see little patches, which turned into big patches, which turned into a complete covering of snow. Josh, who had been utterly bored (but extremely well behaved) until that point, got so excited, and kept telling us over and over again about all the snow he was seeing (just in case we didn't see it ourselves).. We were beginning to think we didn't even have to get out of the car and he would still be completely satisfied.

Turns out we couldn't have picked a better day for our little jaunt! The temperature was in the mid 50's, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We didn't even need jackets! We decided to go to Fort Tuthill on the southern edge of Flagstaff. Turns out we were the ONLY ones there. It was awesome to have the entire place to ourselves. Joshua was mesmerized by the snow. Ben on the other hand wasn't much of a fan... wouldn't touch the stuff. But once he had a shovel to play with, he decided it wasn't all bad. After a few minutes of play, Joshua started saying that his hands were hurting from the cold (we didn't have gloves yet), so we decided to head into town to track down some gloves and get some lunch. We found a little ski/camping shop and got some really nice gloves for Josh, Andrew and I. After a good lunch at Chili's we headed back to Fort Tuthill where we were still the only people in sight. We played for an hour or two, making snowmen, snow angels and throwing snowballs. Then we hopped back in the car and headed to Starbucks for hot chocolate (Joshua's idea, naturally). After finishing our cocoa, we hopped back in the car and headed home.

It was amazing. The kids spent over 4 hours in the car and I don't think anyone cried all day. I don't think our day could have been any better. I see us doing this many many more times. Here are some photos of our fun day of play!