Coming from the US, “snow days” are actually when life stops because there is snow…schools close down, work shuts down…sometimes, it’s a welcome day off.  But more often than not, it means you have to scramble to figure out what you’ll do with your kids all day while at the same time, scrambling to figure out how you’ll work from home.   But here in Denmark, snow days are exactly what they sound like – days full of that white stuff…The name of the game here lately has been snow… I grew up in North Dakota where snow was about as plentiful as air a good chunk of the year – if we had a snow day, there really was a good reason for it, like say a blizzard…or -40 weather.   I was always so surprised how it little of it was necessary to shut down our capital city of Washington, DC when we lived there, where doors start locking at the mere mention of snow.But here in Denmark, snow days are a little closer to how I remember them – and while it’s coooooold here now, especially with the ocean winds, it’s not nearly as cold as it was in North Dakota.  Which is a good thing since here kids are pretty serious about snow.  We’ve had it on the ground now for about a week and each day in forest school they have been out sledding, making snow men, throwing it around…and building fires and making pots of mint tea to keep warm.  I was even lucky enough to catch a ride around the yard in a sled myself courtesy of the forest schoolers.  It’s been fun – and I think, much like when they’re out in the rain, it helps them embrace life in all kinds of weather, not just what we grow into thinking is “perfect” weather.Even in the free time, snow dominates.  We went to a birthday party this weekend and no surprise, it was out in the snow – piñata and all! And when we went to visit friends, all the snow suits came out again while the girls ran up and down the banks surrounding the frozen lakes of Copenhagen. Yesterday a friend said that the best part of being outside in weather like this is that you really feel like you deserve the warmth inside when you make it back in, and he couldn’t have been more right.Does it also mean that we’ll deserve the warmth and sunshine of Abu Dhabi later on this week? Because that’s where we’re headed in a few days!  Here come the sand days instead!

I was thinking this weekend about the backlog of fall posts I had here for the blog when we looked up and it almost ceased to matter right then and there.  Fall posts? Forget those – it was snowing! Just like that winter had arrived.Good thing that we had already done our forest school “winterizing” earlier.  That’s the thing about Copenhagen – despite the fact that most kids are outdoors tons and most years (ahem, all years) there is a winter, there always seems to be a shortage of winter gear once winter actually comes.  Learned this the hard way our first year.  Things like boots and snow pants? Can’t be picky! If you see them in your size, buy them (at whatever exorbitant price) since when you actually need them the chances of finding anything in your size is slim.So we were ready.  And she couldn’t wait until school to build a snowman, we had to do it right then and there.  So I had to find winter gear of my own (thank you, ski clothes) and we got a head start on snowman building before going out for the day.  He’s not the most svelte snowman, but for a first attempt for the season, we’ll take it.  We named him Olaf. Of course.