Snowstorm!

Godmother meeting Joseph Anthony for the first time

These are the requisite photos that Southerners must post when there is any snow.

It was a pretty exciting snow storm for us, especially in light of the fact that we've had two very mild winters without snow.

A winter wonderland Sunday morning 

The story of the great Charlotte snowstorm of 2013 couldn't be told without a little anecdote about a certain mischievous four-year-old girl. When the snow was first falling in the late afternoon, the sky was becoming a dim grey. Grampa Neil and John were chatting in the kitchen while I was peacefully nursing Joseph in the den. I thought Mary had gone upstairs to play in her room when I heard John shouting, "Mary is outside!" I shouted back that he was wrong--I mean, obviously. There was no adult with her, there was a snow storm occurring, and it was just a ridiculous thought. John reiterated that Mary was outside, at which point I ran to the front of the house and found the front door ajar.

This certain little girl had decided to venture out the front door to experience the snow storm for herself, but she hadn't been able to return back through our front screen door which is sticky. Thus she felt forced--wearing only a thin dress and being barefoot--to run through the snow storm to the side entrance by the kitchen. There she was too overcome by emotion even to ring the bell but hid like a scraggly wet cat under shelter of our porch--probably hoping very much to be seen and not to be seen. Her fat tears and quivering lip revealed that she had quite scared herself without me having to put too much of the fear of God into her, although she still got a lecture about a litany of all the bad things that could happen to her if she left the house by herself--at which point the old, confident Mary was back and she assured me that she could outrun any dog that might be on the loose and trying to bite her.