*Disclaimer: I LOVE SNOW DAYS, however, when you have 3 small children, a snow day is often more work than going to work, and there is a lot more than a cute hashtag and filtered pictures. This, is the rest of the story.*

The snow started falling at 5 pm yesterday at the 7 Circle and didn’t stop all night. I woke up at 5:20 am to discover that my school district was still running on time. I proceeded to get up, look out the window, and start to panic a little thinking of how I was going to tackle the highway (that happens to run east and west with a wind out of the north). Almost every neighboring school had either already cancelled or had decided to start 2 hours late (including the one my husband works at). I headed back to bed, unable to fall asleep because I kept checking every 10 minutes to see if my prayers for at least a delayed start had been answered. Much to my surprise, around 6 o’clock, my school was cancelled. As my husband puts it, he could feel the happiness radiate from me at that moment. Honestly, it was more relief at not having to drive in the blizzard-like conditions that were going on outside.

Now, as much of a blessing as a snow day is, particularly for a tired teacher in the November lull, a snow day also means more work when you have 3 kids who can’t do everything for themselves yet. The ironic thing about kids is that you can’t pry them out of bed on a school day, but when it is the weekend, or in this case, a snow day, they are up and at em bright and early. 7:02 am to be precise. The sun had not even risen yet and I had a 6 year old by my bedside (why do they always come to my side of the bed?) wanting me to turn on a movie. So, being tired mom, I proceeded to turn on a movie (it must be over an hour long, the longer the better) and headed back to bed. It’s such a futile effort to try to sleep in. Over the next hour the other two, a 4 and 2 year old, proceeded to parade in and out of my room. The four year old wanted something to eat while the 2 year old scared the daylights out of me by putting her face directly next to mine, in true horror movie fashion, and said “mommy, I wake you up”, when I jumped after feeling a presence in my bubble.

After the chaos of breakfast, everyone wanted to go outside and play in the snow. Now, it was extremely cold and windy still, but you can’t convince young kids of that until they experience it firsthand. So, we started the process of getting everyone bundled up to go out. This is not an easy task and typically takes 15 minutes or more to get dressed, and we usually stay outside approximately 4 minutes. We initiated the getting bundled up process at least 5 times throughout the day.

When daddy went outside to break water and make sure all the animals were situated, all 3 wanted to go out to the shop too. That proved to be a mistake. Maybe 10 minutes after they went outside, I heard a wailing cry outside and saw my 2 year old stuck in a snow drift with only one glove. She had gotten stuck because rather than walk through the lower parts of the snow, she went trudging through the deep part. I rushed outside and hauled her in taking off all the winter clothes along the way.  She decided at that point that she really wasn’t sold on the whole snow thing, and told me she wanted to take a nap.

When the girls decided they were too cold and needed to stay inside for a while, that’s when the destruction of the house commenced, not to mention the ongoing conflict and little scrapping that goes along with 3 girls “sharing”. At one point, my girls had a tent with a tube to crawl inside, about 7 naked babydolls, 2 doll strollers (one missing the fabric for the seat), an unknown number of snacks and crumbs, blankets and pillows, and 4 different games spread all over the livingroom floor.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we had a lot of fun. When my little one was napping, my husband and I took the bigger girls out on the sled (although it did end in tears when they got too cold), we made some delicious snow ice cream, watched The Grinch, and daddy lit a fire in the fireplace. There were so many blessings to my day. However, in the social media world we live in where you only see the highlight reel, I wanted you to see, the rest of the story.