We Fell in Love With Winter

Granted, it's an odd post title what with the cheery new banner and weather that has finally turned to the teens for good it seems, here in Toronto.

However, I wanted to remember this bitter winter precisely because it was the perfect storm of sustained cold and snow, enthusiastic kids, and trying new things.

Did you know they make tiny cross-country skiis?! Fell in love with that, too :)

This was the first winter in our little collective memory here that not a single one of us was ill. Not a sniffle, not a cold. And I write this not to tempt the fates, but to remember what a blessing it was. It was a minor miracle, what with the urban mingling we do here everyday, and it was a major factor in this glorious winter of 2014, because it eased the edges of our everyday and gave us even more time.

More time to bundle up and explore the outside and write our names in the snow on nearly frozen creeks.

More time to say, "Let's go that way!" and "I'll follow you!".

 Or to sit still and watch the birds by our window

and encourage a young obsession.

More time for shovelling. (Oh the snow shovelling! Good thing it turned out to be one of Zinadine's favourite things :)

Time to climb things, anything, (Zinadine) or to just lay still in the snow in the backyard on your own and watch the sky (Zinadine again). To watch the kids make up their own silly games. More time to take the train to visit cousins, to write letters, to learn new skills (Safiya fell in love with woodworking), and to play more games.

To say "no thanks" to some things and to learn that when we say "yes" we need to make time after for ourselves as well, even if it's a good "yes" like visiting extended family. To choose to make time for our little family, to create our own occasions that were special simply because we set aside the time for the four of us to explore the world together. It didn't have to be big adventures, just saying "yes" to the world and taking it at our own pace. Finding our own pace, really.

It was still a winter full of the everyday heartaches and joys of friends and family, some of them big, some of them small. And yet it seems that turning inward we were more able to face the outward, all of us together.

Just wanted to remember, is all.