What It Takes to Be a Northerner

I was born in New Hampshire about an hour away from the Canadian boarder, My husband in Virginia south of the Mason Dixon Line. While he has acclimated well to northern life, there is just something unnorthern about about him (outside of the slight southern drawl he still possesses). While I was outside with my son last night (the first day when there was actually enough snow to justify snow pants, I realized what it is). My husband hates the cold and hates the snow. A true Northerner embraces it and makes the most of it.

Little man could not wait to get outside and was crushed when I told him we needed to go and invest in new pair of mittens first. Then of course we had to eat lunch and take a nap. This did not go over well with the 2 year old. Of course I remember my mom doing the same thing to me as a child, and knew that mittens and a nap would be needed before embracing the cold. It also made me think of a good friend of mine in New Hampshire who prays for snow all summer long and I am pretty sure cries the day it melts away in the spring. I have to admit there was a part of me that wanted to play in the snow as much as he did, however, cold hands make for an unbearable 2 year old, so I patiently rushed him to the store for a new pair of mittens, if I was the prepared type I would have anticipated this back in March and purchased mittens on sale then. But look how cute my little kola bear is..........The matching mittens and hat were totally worth the wait.

Then as soon as were were outside little man grabbed the shovel and stated cleaning the walk. No, not really, he was actually shoveling it all into a big pile to jump into, off of and oh did I mention he is really into skateboards(I had to explain to him in the snow, you use snowboards)? Yes, he used the shovel as a snowboard to come down off the mound of snow a few times.

As you can tell by the picture, it was dark out by the time I finally convinced little man that hot chocolate with marshmallows might be a good idea. Although, I should not have been surprised at this since as a teenager I used to plop down into a snowbank with one of my closest friends and talk for hours looking up at a starry sky. For those of you not from the north, the best nights for start gazing are freezing cold ones.

And where was daddy for all of this......inside complaining about how cold it is.