"Do You Guys Have Snow?"

So, my friend Amy, in Kenya asked me the other day if we had any snow.

Is the world round? Is the sky blue? (well, technically, if winter lasts much longer here, I may begin to question that second one)

It snows here everyday. And the kids play outside every day.

If it's below 15 degrees (fahrenheit), I usually limit it to about an hour.

But it's been a pretty mild winter, from what I'm told, and it's hung around mostly in the 15-25 range.

This week it's been over 30 a few days! So exciting!

And the snow is melting everywhere! Which is kind of sad.

Because underneath the snow is just so dirty.

(both of the kids hats were made by Amy, by the way. As you can probably guess, her kids don't need hats in Kenya. And just wait until you see Barb's)

There are "green men" who are out all day every day in our neighborhood clearing snow and ice (and steeplejacks who climb up and scrape the roofs!). They plow the snow from the street into big piles that the kids love to play on/in. This pile got a lot bigger before they came with a dumpster and cleared it all out. And repeat it again every few weeks.

I'm not sure if you can even see it, but this is a picture of the ice that we came home to after our trip to Dubai. It was from two ice storms. One of which shut down the power of one entire airport and cancelled flights out of two big airports for over 48 hours. We pulled sheets of ice off of our car. Thank goodness for the green men. As you can see, they cracked and banged and scraped all the ice away while we were gone (they finished our driveway after we got back).

This is what Barb does inside the house.

Even with all the cold and snow and ice outside, it stays toasty warm inside. Sometimes too warm, and we have to crack a window for a little bit. We use radiators, and they are hard to regulate.

And this is what Barb does outside.

The green men do a good job of keeping everything clear, so we can usually just use the stroller. But it snows every day, and sometimes multiple times a day, so when the snow comes faster than the green men can work, we have this little sled.

And Barb sleds around saying "wheeeee".

(nearly everyone in our little neighborhood has some form of a sled with a rope like this, but out in the town I mostly see sleds with a big metal handle on the back that can be used like strollers. AND fun fact: Russian doctors tell mothers of babies that they have to walk their babies outside for a minimum of an hour every day, no matter the temperature. you should see these things bundled up)

So, to answer your question Amy: Yes. We have snow.

Do you have sun in Kenya? :)