Playing in the Snow

We found us some winter! 

And we only had to fly 2000 miles away to do it, too. The Texas branch of my family joined the New England branch in Boston  for a couple days, and then the whole lot of us ferried up to New Hampshire for a few days of wholesome fun in the snow at the Inn at East Hill Farm. We had to play outside as much as possible in order to work up an appetite for the hearty family-style meal that always seem to lurk just around the corner of our daily schedule. 

Playing outside included cross-country skiing (and falling in the snow, which for some of us could rank as its own pastime), sledding, traipsing through the forest, and feeding the multitude of farm animals. 

As long as I've lived in Texas, there's something about New England that will never stop feeling deeply familiar to me. Is it the inexorable turn of seasons, the lack of chain stores along the highways, the architecture of the homes, the way everything (especially around Boston) just seems a bit more bunched together?

Most of all, I think it's just the way people talk. I can smell a New England accent a mile off, even a faint whiff of it, and no matter where I am, it always sounds to me like I've come home.