And now there came both mist and snow...

At last, at last, at LAST it snowed!

Yesterday I was sitting in my office making lesson plans. I glanced over at the window, and there were big fat snowflakes going by! I forgot myself and exclaimed, "It's SNOWING!" and jumped up and did a little dance. As I was saying that, I heard from the secretary and the people in the office next door, "Noooo! It's snowing!" They keep telling me I'll get tired of the snow, but I won't believe that until it happens. I understand, though, that you get tired of whatever you are used to. The people in Mississippi got tired of humidity, for example. In Oklahoma, I get tired of storms.

But back to the snow. This morning, I was awakened to some of the best words ever: "It's snowing, and I built a fire." It is the greatest thing in the world to have a good husband. The only thing that could have made that better would have been the addition of, "And school is closed." But New York schools don't close for an inch of snow, of course.

I took Tula on a walk, and she loved the snow. She buried her head in it and never acted cold. I'm so glad we decided to let her hair grow long for the winter even though it means she is now totally caked with snow and flinging it all over the house.

This isn't much snow. It's just enough to make everything pretty, and they said it may be gone tomorrow. But we are going to get more this weekend. I hope that's true! I'm used to Oklahoma snow. It doesn't last very long, and we only get it a few times a year. So even as I love the snow, I'm already mourning that it won't stay. I feel like I want to stay outside all day today in this snow, as if it will be the last, but the great thing about upstate New York is that this is NOT the last! This is only the beginning! They tell me we will have snow right up until April!

It's like when we got assigned to Fort Sill and suddenly I had two years of Joseph home and not deploying stretching out in front of me: It was an unbelievable feast after years of famine. I'm pretty sure President Obama is going to tell me that particular feast is over in his speech tonight. But the snow feast has just started, and that's something.

I wish all I had to do was walk around in it, but I have to go to school and listen to all these poor upstate New York people sigh with pain and say woefully, "And so it starts." I'll try not to celebrate in front of them.