The Snowman

The boy and the Wife teamed up to make a snowman this morning. They had so much fun that the lass decided that she had to join in the fun as well. Previous, she had declined the chance to go outside in the snow because, well, I guess because she’s at that age. Still, she wasn’t going to let her brother one up her in snowman making.

While they were building the snowman, I entertained the dogs by shoveling snow off the deck. I clear the deck partly to remove the load from the deck, but mostly so that trips out to the wood pile are as easy as possible. The dogs LOVE it when I throw snow off the deck. They jump and run to catch the snow and basically go completely insane. Just for good measure, I threw snowballs for them afterwards. Chasing snowballs is bigtime fun for them as well. They’ll basically do wind sprints across the yard chasing down the snowballs I toss in one direction and then the complete opposite.

After the snowman, and the shoveling, was done the Wife insisted I take some pictures of it. While taking pictures, the boy asked me to go and get my “magic” hat for the snowmand so it could come alive.

The magic hat is a toy that the Wife picked up for me a while back. I’ve stopped using it because, even though some decent magic effects can be done with it, it spoils magic for the kids. They want to play with it and use it and do the magic themselves. So by them “doing” the magic, they learn that the magic is really just a trick. I didn’t want magic spoiled for them so early, so I’ve shelved the hat. The kids haven’t forgotten about it obviously.

The boy was legitimately perplexed that the hat didn’t bring the snowman to life. Apparently the possibility that the hat isn’t really magic didn’t occur to him. The Wife quickly explained that the snowman had to be made of magic snow from where Santa comes from. The boy replied that he would ask Santa for magic snow next year.

Except that he decided he couldn’t wait that long. He made a wish today for Santa to bring magic snow next year so that Santa would have plenty of time to get it ready.

At least that gives us a year to come up with another excuse for a lack of magic snow.