Catie and I had a lovely Christmas yesterday. She loved all of her gifts and wanted to stop and play with each one before moving on to open the next one. Among her very favorites were her new “big blue puffy jacket” from Mumsie, the Princess Elena doll from Grandma and Grandpa Dey, and the lovely tea set from the Callahans. The best of all though was the gift Mother Nature gave northern Utah- our very first White Christmas! We got about 8 inches of beautiful powdery snow overnight on Christmas Eve that kept on falling for almost all of Christmas Day. You’ll have to take my word for it on how absolutely gorgeous and magical it was, because we were too busy having fun stomping around, throwing snowballs, and climbing up onto the top the massive snow drifts to take pictures of it. It was amazing. I got to take out my new Bean Boots for a test drive, and Catie kept telling me how warm it was in her new jacket.

Christmas feels much more jolly and merry when there’s snow on the ground, much in the same way that Halloween felt more sincere when there were falling leaves. I love having snowball fights and making ugly blobby snowmen and seeing the snowy mountains peek out through the fog and clouds and bundling up in big jackets and warm scarves… it’s a winter wonderland like I’d only previously seen in Christmas movies. Though I’ll certainly get tired of the snow and the cold later, right now I’m in a sort of Snow Honeymoon. I’m especially excited for when the rest of the psych department gets back from their holidays so we can have a group outing up to Beaver Mountain for some snowboarding!

I’m trapped at home due to not owning a shovel to dig out my car, not being able to drive in the snow yet, and generally being from Florida and therefore not brave enough to venture out onto the road right now in the first place. Luckily the bus system here is amazing and there are stops EVERYWHERE and it’s all free, so my plans to not drive until April should be pretty feasible.

We’ll see.