Snowing In Amman 2012 – but the D2R was on!

“The Jo snow people reveal a fascinating exploration of identity. This day goes down as one of the healthiest, most fun days in our recent history. Love it!”  - Nadine Toukan

This is my biggest search result of those days. I should have probably blogged during this momentous, city-stopping event, but I was too busy making Vanilla Steamers, Hot Chocolate, soup, granola bars and staying out of the kitchen while The Hub made a huge pot of chili.

We turned on the tedfiyya for the first time all year, as we had no space to hang the wet coats, gloves, hats, jeans and shoes. The house smelled like a dry cleaning establishment with all that wet stuff drying, and it was sweet.

The kids learned from their friend’s Palestinian grandpa, how he used to put his shoes in plastic bags then put them in his shoes to keep his feet dry. They then went outside and shoveled the driveway and street for the neighbors, I trained them like good Tahoe kids – shovel first, play later.

It was an amazing time. They went out and played with kids I didn’t even know lived on our street. We live parallel, but separate lives with some of our neighbors. Somehow, we’ve never got into the swing of nap in the afternoon go visit at night. We are early to bed, early to rise types, and 10pm is bed time – my brain turns off at 9pm. Plus, having a dog meant the end of Christmas visits for all but two neighbors. They are grateful she guards the whole ‘hood, but we don’t get the neighbors visiting like before.

So it was even more fun to see the neighborhood come alive with snowballs and fun times. The kids came in with stories of how helpful hijabs are in protecting ears from snowballs. How the girls ‘threw like girls’ (duh!) and how they taught them how to pack a snowball and taught them – by example – how to aim and throw. The poor dears got the short end of the snowball fight, I am afraid, but had fun.

I hope the girls moms still speak to me. Lil Kinz was pretty mad at her brothers for overdoing the head-shots, especially since it was her birthday, so we had a few tears after she stomped in. The girls giggled at her Drama Queen display, and she shouted at them and pulled out the ‘stupid’ word, which made them laugh more.

Really it was a magical day, everyone (except Lil Kinz) just calmed down, watched snow and all was well with the world again. Made me forget the bad and focus on the good. Made me wish we could cover the whole region in two feet of snow and let everyone have snowball fights.

We’ve been just as excited about the snow as hoping the Dead 2 Red Ultra Marathon, didn’t get cancelled as a result of it. It wasn’t, Spikekid ran and his team did well. Whew! So in addition to being afraid of wild dogs and kids getting run over by Saudi drivers, I worried about flash-floods and hypothermia. Prayed, of course, but you know how prayer can just be worrying at God about things. Especially when moms pray for kids.

We almost had kinzayn in the Dead2Red, but History Buff’s team fell apart the week before. The kids hadn’t trained enough. He had been so faithful, out there running almost daily.

So that was our snowy weekend in Amman. How was yours?