More of the White Stuff

I've clearly got to come up with some other words for 'snow', since it does seem to be a recurring theme in this blog. Today was yet another snow day! The girls were already supposed to be home from school because all their teachers are on strike for the day (still not sure over what), but what was supposed to be a light snowfall turned into a pretty major snowfall (another 15-20 cm maybe? It's hard to judge) and so our outing to Courmayeur was postponed (as Toby observed, it would be quite nice to be able to see it when we visit it for the first time), and instead we had a walk into town for a hot chocolate in the morning, followed by some time digging out the quinzee (is it with an 'ee' or a 'y' ending? the web seems to disagree...). Chamonix really is a very sweet little town with a pedestrianized main street that's beautiful at the moment in the snow, lit up with lots of fairy lights.
There's talk of a x-country ski this afternoon, but at this rate I could see some more snow play in the backyard, followed by some baking, some reading, some game playing and, dare I say it, a movie... this IS a snow day after all.

 Fairies favour pain au chocolats it seems...

Face painting is becoming the new obsession

 Buying some school supplies

Good on the French posties! They deliver on bikes IN THE SNOW. And they're cheerful about it too.

 Isn't this a great effect on the photo? (Thank you Instagram.) It reminds me of those faded and discoloured photos my parents have from the mid-seventies... my childhood, basically. Don't get me started on the 'third child' whine about there being NO photos of me (versus about twenty thousand and fifty of my older sister and brother), but the few photos my parents do have of me do look a lot like this... We also had a lot of snow when I was a kid, or so it seemed. (For years my parents fobbed me off saying that all the pictures of me were taken as slides... until we finally had a slide show and there were none of me there either... Remember slides? How funny to think of them now in this digital age...)

 Using the ice axe