Snow Ice Cream

I've posted enough about bad days on here- but today was a great day.
It started out raining ice and turned into a slushy, sloggy mess.  Little One and I were undeterred. We bundled up and went to the gym!  To find the childcare closed.  Apparently, they took a snow day.  Seriously! Sissies. 
Little One was SO disappointed that She wasn't going to get to play with the other kids. So I stopped home just long enough to change and took Her somewhere that there were sure to be tons of kids on a snow day.  The Mall. 
We don't do this very often, so it's kind of a treat for Her.  She played and jumped and climbed in the play area for hours.  Had a snack, played and jumped and climbed some more.  Put on a dance show on top of the giant dragonfly wings.  Climbed through tunnels, went down slides, and ran giggling from people whether they knew they were chasing Her or not. 
We wandered the mall a bit, and I'm glad J wasn't there to witness Her magnetic pull towards the glittery jewelry store display cases and the designer sunglasses.  Then, since we were on our way home anyways and the vast, slush-filled parking lot was practically empty, we went puddle stomping. 
Have you not puddle-stomped, Peanuts? Surely you have.  If you haven't, you should.  It's fantastic.  You end up muddy, soaked, and freezing, and you had so much fun you don't even care.  We were in fits of giggles all the way home. 
After hot soup and a nap, J came home early and took Little One and the dogs out to play in what had become a big, fluffy snowstorm.  The neighborhood kids came and joined the fun. Finally She came in for hot chocolate and watching Dora the Explorer with me under blankets, and then a big dinner.  Afterward, I mixed up a huge bowl of Snow Ice Cream.  Snow Ice Cream is divine.  It reminds me very much of my dad, who ritually made this for my sister and I when we were small.  Would you like the recipe?

1 BIG bowl of fresh snow.  The fluffier the better. 
Milk (in our case soy milk)
Sugar
Vanilla
(Hershey Syrup optional for a chocolate version)

Mix together. Eat fast, before it melts. 

 It's super yummy.  Little One was almost entranced by the yum-ness.  Then She made up a song about it. She warmed up in a bubble bath, and then we read stories until She was almost asleep in my lap.  She snuggled into bed with Her bunny, and said, "Little One and bunny so tozy in these blankets and jammies!" She told me She would dream of snow ice cream and playing kick-the-snow with daddy.  And She fell asleep smiling. 
J spent the rest of the night outside, being a good Samaritan. He shoveled our walk and the neighbors', shoveled out our cars, and then shoveled most of the evening away as one silly person after another tried to drive up the hill in front of our house, fishtailed all over the place, and got stuck.  He is a good, good man. Who was only slightly bitter that I used my big belly as an excuse to watch him strain back muscles in the blinding snow while I sipped my ginger tea. The snow is still falling, and he is still shoveling as I type. 
Today, absolutely nothing spectacular happened.  It was a day like a million days, that will fade in our memories, losing traction to bigger events, sharper pangs of emotion.  But it was the kind of day that I hope becomes one in a chorus of softly beautiful days.  I hope they will melt into one another and become a warm, firelight kind of glow that forms the background to these years in our lives.  Maybe we won't remember today specifically, not in detail.  But we'll think back to early years and winters and know that there was snow ice cream and playing and kindness, and snuggling under blankets and togetherness.  For Little One, it might be like the snow ice cream.  She might not know precisely what the ingredients were, how much of each thing went in.  She might not see the sugar or the milk...they all blend together with the snow in a whirl of white.  But She'll know that whatever it was made of exactly, it was sweet.