White Christmas, Part 2: New Jersey

As you may remember from my recent post, my childhood Christmases in New Jersey weren't often celebrated under a blanket of snow. In fact, I have memories of heading down to Washington Crossing Park to watch the famed reenactment Christmas Day in nothing more than a sweatshirt. Here are my parents looking pretty happy in their light, snowless winter gear ... not to mention their soldier friend there, who looks pretty pleased with his accomplishments. (Yea, I was just looking for an excuse to include this photo because it makes me laugh, every time. The Indian in the Cupboard anyone? Or Night at the Museum?)

But this year when we arrived in New Jersey (err, Bethlehem that is), the ground was not brown and barren!

Confused by the huge mushroom of snow and the legs peaking out? Well you see, as I mentioned in this post, when we were little we used to spend hours out in the snow exercising our architecture skills and constructing masterpieces of snow. So of course when we were gifted with a yard full of snow this year, we happily donned our old snow-fort hats (Sarah's there looks a bit Indiana Jones, or perhaps Renee Zellweger from Cold Mountain?) and got to work.

(Kirsten was already back in St. Louis by this point)

We may have paused to play a few games of Fox n' Geese

to throw a few snowballs ...

and to play with the dog (who puts on a fierce fighting face but really just wants to be a ballerina).

In the end we had our very own igloo!

Which was the perfect spot for a cup of hot chocolate.

Max thought so too.

Here's another little video to give you a better sense of the fort, and to show off Max's mad digging skills ...

Have any of you played in the snow this year? Made a snowman? Snow-angels? Or perhaps triumphed in a mass snowball fight? Shout out to all the other fort-crafters out there!

Read about our Minnesota White Christmas here, and our adventures en route to New Jersey here

Thanks to my dad for taking many of these photos! Renee Zellweger photo from here.