Memoir+-+Snow+Day

Snow Day “Look outside! Look outside!” echoed through the entire house, my sister was up before I was. My dad’s alarm clock woke us all up just seconds earlier. Doing what every little kid does when they first wake up every morning during winter, I rubbed my eyes and looked out the window, mainly to see what my sister was yelling about from three rooms away. My jaw dropped to the floor and I leaped out of my bed as if it were on fire. It was the middle of December, on a bright, cold, and snowy day. My sister and I got ready to head outside. We bet and raced to see who could get ready faster and be outside first. We snatched our gloves, hats, boots, and coats as fast as we could. “Done” I heard, along with the sound of the door opening. She beat me, rats. School was cancelled, for us, this meant Christmas came early. Exhilaration rushed over us as we leaped off of our porch into the yard, and heard that crunch of fresh snow. I stood in awe at the amount of gleaming snow had fallen while we were sleeping. Chills rushed through my body as I heard “How’d you like my perfectly made snowball” followed by some maniacal laughter. Naturally this started a war. This Great War consisted of war cries and an insane amount of snowballs that nearly blotted out the sun. The next thing on our agenda was to make the perfect snowman. We spent almost an hour alone making the shape and then we ran inside to get supplies to dress him up. We grabbed the traditional carrot for the nose, a scarf, and two pieces of charcoal we found in our grill in the back yard. Soon enough, we realized we didn’t have arms for him. We spent time digging in the snow around our tree, looking for any broken limbs. After a while we gave up the search under the tree. I grabbed a chair from our patio and made my way up the tree to find the perfect twigs. We got everything together and finally, it was complete. After a while the piercing winds got to us. We were shivering so badly that we had to go inside to warm up. We took off our coats, gloves, scarves, and sat by the vents in the house to get warm. It was about 15 degrees outside, with a wind chill below zero. Our mom made us stay inside until it warmed up. We were trapped, barricaded in our house for 3 hours until our mom released us back out into the endless white tundra. This time was spent watching The Lion King and playing one of the longest games of Monopoly known to man-kind. Lunch was served, chili and grilled cheese sandwiches. My sister and I, of course, inhaled our food because we both knew we could go back out as soon as we finished. Once again, the race was on to grab our coats, gloves, scarves, and boots. We ran out the door in a blur, I beat my sister this time though. The second I looked out into the yard I got the feeling that someone had just punched me right in the stomach. “What are you staring at weirdo?” echoed in my ear. All I could do was point in the general direction of where our snow man was. All my sister could do was let out a small whimper. Someone destroyed our creation, the thing that took us nearly two hours to make. All that was left was a massive mound of snow with two short twigs jutting out of the top. The scarf and hat we took all the time to gather were missing. “Who did this!” my sister yelled. My mom immediately came running out of the house to see what was wrong. As she appeared in the door, she saw the remains of what we had made. The first thing that was on our minds after we got over the shock of this total destruction was finding out who was responsible for this horrible act. We devised a plan of attack, a strategy to figure out how we could locate this person. We searched the entire yard looking for some sort of evidence that could help us in our investigation. Buried under the remains of our snowman was a very large stick. “The murder weapon” I proclaimed. We were on our way to catching this terrible villain. Bike tracks were our next discovery. They were almost covered up by our own footprints in our rush to get to our lifeless mound of snow. Being the little weird kids that we were, I played Sherlock Holmes while my sister took the role of Watson. We followed these tracks as they weaved in and out of the various back yards of our neighbors. We went behind houses, around trees, and through bushes that ripped our bulky winter coats. The fresh snow preserved these tracks so that we could find the perpetrators. We finally reached the park at the end of our neighborhood. The tracks continued to an enormous tree in the middle of the bitter, isolated park. My sister and I looked up in the tree. The hat rested gently on top a tree limb, while the scarf had become entangled amongst the branches. These were far out of our reach; it felt like they were miles above us, resting among the clouds. Disheartened, we continued to follow our only lead. We went under the slide where the icicles hung so low they scraped the ground. Next, we went over the tennis courts where the nets were completely frozen stiff. Finally, we reached the freshly plowed street at the other side of the park. The tracks were gone forever. “Dang it!” my sister’s cries echoed through the entire park. We weren’t about to let this be how our day ended. The bright sun was still high in the sky. We were going to rebuild our snowman, and in greater numbers. Swiftly and efficiently, we got to work. I began making the bodies of the snowmen while my sister decorated them. Two hours and many frozen appendages later, we had four perfectly made snowmen. This time, we wouldn’t let anyone get to them. Exhausted, frozen, and shivering, we made our way inside where hot chocolate and warm, dry clothes awaited our arrival. For the rest of the day we sat around the house in our warm pajamas and watched television. Every hour or so my sister and I would run to the window to see if our four creations were still safe and secure in our yard. Our army of snowmen lasted an entire week until it finally got warm enough to where they melted one after another. To this day, we are still very proud of our accomplishments and remember the grand adventure that we had that day.