Remembering Another Snow Day

Katie and I woke up to the following on Tuesday:

After realizing that ACU was closed for the day, meaning Katie didn’t have to go to work (and I’m without a full time job), we then hibernated in our room for a few hours before re-emerging mid-morning to find it still snowing.

Katie and I have some pretty entertaining snow days. I think this may have been the first one where I wasn’t sent slipping across the street to the corner Save-a-Lot. In the past, we’ve done brunch and watched movies/tv shows (Friends).

Tuesday evening, we went to our snow-covered backyard and played wiffleball until sundown. (With spring training starting, I’m getting some baseball fever, and in all of my years of playing baseball, I’ve never played in snow.) Hitting was pretty funny–Katie would hit grounders back at me, only they’d just plop in the snow. We later made snow angels in some of the precipitation that didn’t get interfered with by the wiffleball.

I’m grateful for days like Tuesday–I feel like we get so caught up in the busyness and insanity of trying to meet deadlines and fill our schedule books with work that we forget some of the most important things: family, fun, and rest. Snow days (in Abilene anyway) shut down the town and our hectic schedules; it’s as if there are one or two (or like four this winter) of these built-in, unexpected holidays every year. Snow days remind me to enjoy life and rest and laugh and play.

So this week, I’m thankful for the gift of snow, and that it’s a gift in Abilene and not a hazard or annoyance like it is in some places in the nation. I’m thankful that I got to rest and play with my wife; I for one did not get out of my pjs on Tuesday.

Today, it was 60 degrees, and it seems that when the weather is “normal”, we pay less attention to what we’re doing and are more prone to rushing through life. So I’m wondering what it takes for me (and for you) to slow down and enjoy life without assistance of snow days or other events that shut the town down.