We did have snow last year. Enough to take Josie out for the obligatory “first snowfall” pictures. But there really wasn’t enough to play in. This year is a bit different. We’ve had some arctic air over the last week and several snow storms moved in. Of course, we missed the first one last weekend. We barely got a dusting. And Wednesday’s brought just another dusting. But by Thursday we had actually gotten close to half an inch. (I know, that’s still a dusting to some of you.) We took a nice family walk around the neighborhood to visit my folks. Josie absolutely loved walking in the snow. She wouldn’t let us carry her there at all. Some of it did melt so it wasn’t looking like all that much by Thursday evening but by Friday morning we had almost an inch! This was very exciting for us. More snow fell off and on throughout the morning so I took Josie out to play in the front yard around lunch time. She really enjoyed “throwing” snowballs and picking snow up off the ground. I even helped her make her first snow angel. She put up with it until I wanted to take a picture and set her back down. As you can see, she wasn’t so happy at that point.
But don’t worry, the smiles came back as soon as I stood her back up and dusted her off. The good news is, it’s been snowing since last night and we now have around 7 or 8 inches. We took her out again this afternoon in hopes of building a snowman but our expert snowman-maker (Steve) said it was just too powdery to stick together. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen any other snowmen. We tried to make another snow angel but she was most unhappy with that experience again. The snow angel looked better today though since there was more snow.
We are expecting even more snow over the evening with it supposedly changing to freezing rain sometime tomorrow. Hopefully it will warm up slowly so we can have a “white” Christmas even if it doesn’t actually snow on Christmas Day.
On a sad note, Josie fell down in the house last night and split her lip open. 
She also must have hit her top left front tooth because it was bleeding at the gum. There was a lot of blood and tears. After sucking on a washcloth with an ice cube in it for a bit the bleeding stopped and so did the crying (from all of us). She has a bruised and fat lip today and is eating more on the right side of her mouth but otherwise seems to be ok. As you can see, she was still all smiles this morning.
And on a very happy note, it’s almost Christmas and we are definitely ready. Josie has been enjoying her advent calendars every day, especially the chocolate one. She has also tried to get into the presents under the tree a couple of times and really enjoys looking (aka pulling on) the ornaments on the tree. She has several favorite Christmas carols, including the Little Drummer boy (“pum pum”) and Deck the Halls (“ya ya”). And she is loving all of the Christmas books I’ve had for years and years. She even made her visit to Santa a few weeks ago. She was a bit shy but she did warm up to him when he brought out his book to read and gave her a candy cane.
Merry Christmas everyone!!