Snow!

(Erm, this post is a week late... I blame computer problems. And school.)

I know the title looks like I'm exclaiming "snow!" but really I am trying to sing the song "Snow" from White Christmas...but once you get past all the "snows," the title line is totally filled up and it's not anymore recognizable than it was with just one word. But that was the song I was singing around the kitchen on Saturday when we woke up to big, puffy flakes of snow coming down.

Somehow, it officially feels like Christmas now. The rush to get to the end of the year--especially since classes go right up until the week before Christmas this semester--made me feel like Christmas was coming almost against my will. Plus, the weather was in the 70s, so every time I tried to play Christmas music I got that jarring feeling of listening to Christmas music in August. But the snow--and the down coat and warm boots--has sort of made everything fall into place.

We had such a delightful weekend. A relaxing weekend is, unfortunately, an unusual event, but somehow we managed to have no plans the entire weekend except a little Christmas party on Saturday evening. In fact, I got up in the morning, padded downstairs to work on the grocery list, then decided I wasn't read to get up yet and crawled back in bed! We had breakfast in front of the Christmas tree, built a blazing fire, and pretty much watched the snow come down.

After our party, Jason and I went to Carlyle in Shirlington for a late dinner. It was the first date we'd had in a while, and we got to sit upstairs near a window. The street in Shirlington is lined with trees that are full of twinkle lights, and from the top floor the twinkling trees fill the picture windows. It was a perfect place to celebrate the snow.

Plus, our house looks really cute dressed in snow. We had spent the previous Saturday (wearing short sleeves and sunglasses) putting lights up on our house, and it has been sooooooo worth the frustration--Monday night I had a long day at work and came home sort of discouraged, but Jason had turned on the lights and I pulled into a wintry fairyland when I turned into the driveway. I think more people need wintry fairylands in their lives. Next weekend is packed with activity--of the basically two full weekends between getting home from Thanksgiving and leaving for Christmas, we apparently decided to take one off and then have three Christmas parties the next--but I'm now going into it feeling all festive and Joy to the World-y, so yay for snow!