February 14, 2004, Austin, TX: In a once-every-two-decades occurance, snow actually fell and accumulated today in the Central Texas region. Having it fall on St. Valentine's Day (and a Saturday at that) made it all the more special.
We had had hints that it might snow since Friday morning -- snow flurries were seen striking the car on the way to school and work, the local weathergeeks were predicting it to snow for days (though they said it wouldn't stick), it was getting noticeably greyer and colder....
When I woke up at about 6:30am, I looked out and noticed that it had snowed overnight and there was some on the ground. In the pre-dawn light, it was difficult to see how much. Jarod woke up about 10 minutes later, went through his early morning ritual, and then asked to watch a little TV. Since it was still quite early, I figured I'd just wait and see how long it took him to notice the snow.
After the first cartoon was over, Jarod asked for some breakfast. I sat him down at the kitchen table facing the big picture-window back doors with the vertical blinds turned open. All he needed to do was look, but it still took about 20 minutes for him to notice. I don't remember exactly what caught his attention, but this little voice, full of wonder and awe, soon caught mine,
"Papa -- it snowed!"
Well, he ran out and walked around in it for about 30 seconds, when I convinced him that he had to come inside and get his mother to bundle him up if he wanted to go out and play in the snow. Yep, you guessed it, Cayton was still asleep. It was fun seeing him trying to get her out of bed, "Quickly Mama, quickly!"It wasn't too difficult getting everybody moving, and we were out the door in about 10 minutes. By now, it was finally bright enough to take pictures, so I grabbed my camera and followed the family outside. We were the first ones up in our neighborhood, and got the place to ourselves for about an hour. (This turned out to be a good thing, since most of the snow had melted by about 1:00 or 2:00. Only a few large snowmen made it through the day.)
Jarod made his first snow angel and then insisted that I make one also. (I think I got a concussion from the fall.) I'm not sure who threw the first snowball, I think it was Cayton, but Jarod took to it like a fish to water. When the neighbors came out, no one was safe. I built a small snowman, but it didn't last very long. No, the sun didn't get, Jarod needed more ammo. We had a blast for about 2 hours, before finally climbing into the car to go see what the rest of the world looked like.
Yep, Jarod's first snowfall was a surefire hit.
If you'd like to see some of the pictures I took of our transformed environment, click here.
Warning: there are a lot of pictures.