Alert! Alert! Winter Storm!

All last week, the forecasters predicted we'd have a winter storm. The local television stations featured special "storm coverage" and the children clasped their hands in gleeful anticipation of the snowball fights they'd have. On Thursday night, my husband said, "I wouldn't go out if I were you. The roads might be slick." The snow was expected to start Thursday and continue Friday with "possible accumulations of one to two inches," according to the experts.

Alas, no snow fell. Not on Friday, not on Saturday. (The kids had a long discussion about why Michigan is better than Washington and I explained about the long winter we endured when we didn't see green grass from October to March. Just talking about it gave me cabin fever.)

Sunday morning, I was stunned to see a blanket of snow covering the world. Actually, it was more like a thin, lacy afghan than a blanket--green grass poked through the white and droplets of already-melted snow dripped here and there.

My boys came to life as if it were Christmas morning all over again. They pulled on coats and shoes and gloves (my brand-new, never-worn-before leather gloves which were a gift last year--no, they did not have permission). I was upstairs getting ready for church under the constant gaze of Babygirl. I heard the door slam and the boys burst back into the house, shedding coats and shoes in the middle of the entryway.

When we left for church a short time later, a two-foot snowman sat on the front lawn. This defies all laws of gravity and physics and weather because as I mentioned, maybe one inch of snow fell.

But the snowman with its pinecone nose and rocks for eyes still stands, rather pathetic and ragged now, in the front yard, even as the perennials have begun to grow and the hyacinth's first green sprouts promise impending spring.