Indoor Snowstorm

Wednesday night. The kids watched Nickelodeon in the sunroom while I perused the internet. The night was turning out to be a forgettable one. Then I read a post by Shelley, one of my favorite bloggers and friends, and it changed the course of our evening. You can read her inspiring story here.

I shut my laptop, turned off the TV, and announced, "It's snowflake time."

We pulled out our box of scissors and a stack of pristine white copy paper. I demonstrated the folding process, and soon creations were underway.
Madi experimented with tiny snowflakes. Her masterpiece was one the size of a dime.
Soon the table and floor filled with tiny paper shards and scraps.
Meya remarked that the scraps of paper scattered across the table and floor looked suspiciously like snow.

I thought of my friend Shelley, again. And made a rare spontaneous (and even rarer messy) decision.

We scooped up the scraps in our hands and moved to the open space by our front door. On the count of three we threw the paper in the air. I looked up, and for a moment, it did look like snow, fluttering down. The scraps got caught in our hair and on our shirts. We piled them up a second time and made it snow again.

Outside the mosquitoes hummed in the warm night. The call to prayer from the nearby mosque mingled with our "Cherish the Ladies" Christmas album. And thanks to a brave friend, who is helping me be a better mom, we had our very own snowstorm.