Snow Forts, Luge Runs, and the Joy of Winter Play

Dec 11

❄️ Forever a Kid in the Snow

I’ve always been a kid at heart when it comes to playing outside. I prefer summer to winter—I’d rather be warm than cold—but if it is going to be cold, I want a proper snow. Not the decorative dusting that just sits there looking pretty. I mean the good stuff: wet, packable snow you can actually play with.

🏰 Snow Castles in the Front Yard

My love of building in the snow started young. My brother Dave and our best friends from down the street would spend entire days outside constructing snow forts. We’d pack 40-gallon garbage cans with snow from our yard and the neighbors’.

My brother Dave and our best friends helped build the gigantic snow forts

The dream was always a three-tiered fortress, but the third layer inevitably collapsed the ones below. So we settled for two 40-gallon layers topped off with a five-gallon bucket.

At some point, we’d trek to the local fast food joint for cheese sticks to go, which we’d eat inside the fort. Then came the snowball fights—epic battles where we could stand upright inside the fort and still dodge incoming snowballs.

We would build multiple snow forts to enable a good snowball fight. My older self wonders where the sidewalk is… only to know you have to go through the snow fort to walk on it.

⛄ From Snowmen to Igloos

One of the perks of having kids is you can bring out the inner kid without being thought of as immature by your neighbors. Because, after all, I’m building it for the kids 😜. But in all seriousness, my kids love it too. That must be genetic.

Every year, we get a few snowfalls perfect for building. Giant snowmen are a family favorite. The snowballs get so big that the kids and I roll the middle ball up some 2x6 boards.

These snowmen were about six and a half feet tall

One March, the snow was so packable I even made snow arms. Unfortunately, that snowman leaned a little too far backward and took out a bush. This was a late snowstorm where the non-snowman snow had melted by late afternoon

There are no sticks used in the making of this snowman.

Snow shoveling at our house takes twice as long as it probably should—because I pile it into two big mounds. How else are the kids supposed to build their perfect igloos?

🛷 Skeleton or Luge?

And finally, our backyard piece de resistance: the homemade luge course. It takes sweat, effort, and a lot of trial and error, but the kids love it. Sure, we still go to the regular sledding hills, but sometimes the best things are the ones you build yourself.