Christmas in Wisconsin

Growing up, having a white Christmas was the norm.  In fact, I can’t remember one childhood Christmas that we didn’t have a fresh blanket of powdery snow covering our yard when I woke up on Christmas morning.  And that was often the first thing I checked.  I would wake up with the excitement of Christmas morning, but before flying downstairs to see if Santa came, I would throw my blinds up to see how much snow we had.

As a child I might not have realized how special and magical it was to grow up like this, but as an adult I not only look back on it with fondness and appreciation, I yearn for it.  But for whatever reason, over the past few years, we haven’t had the same guarantee of a white Christmas in Wisconsin that we had when I was a child.

But this year, you better believe that we’ve had a white Christmas.  A few days before we departed Spain for Wisconsin, my parents emailed me letting me know that they had been hit with a snowstorm and had gotten a lot of snow.  The hubs and I crossed our fingers that the snow would stick until we arrived…and stick it did.

Wisconsin has truly put on the most beautiful display of Winter for us.  Blankets of dense white snow and days filled with flurries and snowfalls.  It couldn’t feel any more magical – truly a dream of a Christmas.

Since we were both overjoyed by all of the snow, we decided that it was best to live it up with some childhood fun – sledding, building a snowman, playing in my parents yard, building a luge…any type of snow activity that we could think of, we planned to do it.

all suited up for an early morning doughnut run

First up was sledding.  I can’t really remember the last time I was sledding, so I was pretty excited about it.  Covered in layers of sweaters, snow-pants, jackets and all of the trimmings (and feeling a little like Randy from A Christmas Story), we headed over to be biggest sledding hill that I could think of, the hill at Mee-Kwon Park.

The day we went, it was the perfect sledding day.  It was cold but not freezing, and the snow had a little bit of ice on top; perfect for creating a slick sledding surface.

On our first walk up the hill, I started feeling a little concerned about the sledding conditions as I was seeing a lot of people slowing down mid-hill.  But don’t worry, within minutes my concerns were laid to rest as we jetted down the hill at what felt like warp speed, practically reaching the parking lot.

To say that we had a good time is an understatement.  I don’t think that I have laughed and screamed (happy screams) so much in a long time.  It was great.

After checking the weather reports (hoping for more snow) and seeing the possibility for warmer temps and rain in the days ahead, we decided that we needed to make a snowman stat.

The conditions for making a snowman were almost too good.  Literally every piece of snow stuck to our snowball as we rolled it through my parent’s yard, creating a human-sized snowman of proportions so big that we needed to enlist my brothers help to lift his mid-piece.

After the satisfaction of building our snowman, we brought out the sled once more and made a little luge down one of the larger snow-piles off of my parents driveway.  Not anywhere near as big as the hill at Mee-Kwon Park, but equally satisfying and fun?  You betcha-ya.

And while we have had so much fun playing in the snow and goofing around, the real fun has been in being together as a family.  With everyone living in different places, and having many families to share time with, it has gotten harder to get everyone together.

there’s no place like home

But this Christmas we have been blessed with a lot of wonderful days together.  We’ve laughed a lot, stuffed ourselves with tons of my Mom’s amazing homemade meals, butter burgers and Chinese take-out, spent hours around the fire and then laughed some more.  The joy of Christmas has definitely filled our hearts and home this Christmas.