Fun in the Snow

 We had a lovely surprise on the Monday after Christmas.  Light snow had been forecast overnight but when Polar drew the curtains back in the morning, there had actually been heavy snow.

'Yay!' cheered Hanley.  'We can play Armoured Bears!'  Hanley has been wanting to do this since last autumn, when he saw the BBC adaptation of His Dark Materials.  

'In fact,' he continued.  'We could do something even better than that - there is so much snow we can build an Armoured Bear!'

The first thing we needed to do was to work our how Waverley could come outside with us, without getting frozen.  We found one of Polar's thick thermal socks to tuck him up in, and used a wooden clog she had decorated to make him a sledge. 

Then it was time to start building our bear.  We picked a shady spot, under the pergola, where he wouldn't be rained on if the weather changed and the sun couldn't melt him, and we started gathering snow.  Hanley and Endon found that mushroom trays made very good snow trucks, although Hanley was inclined to overload his!  

Soon our bear began to take shape.  We decided he would be running, and big enough that we could all ride on his back.

Endon found some seed heads from the helianthus to make his eyes. while Hanley raided the kitchen for some foil dishes to make him some armour.

'We need Polar and Grizzly to eat more of the mince pies,' Hanley said, as he started squashing the foil dishes into flat plates to make bear armour.  'There won't be enough to properly protect him in battle.'

Once Hanley had fitted our bear's armour, we lifted Waverley out of his sledge and sock so he could have the honour of being the first small bear to ride the Armoured Bear.

Then the rest of us climbed up behind him and pretended we were galloping across the snow in Svarlbard.

When Polar came out to tell us it was lunchtime, she was very impressed with our bear, but worried in case we had got our paws cold.  'You can play for a few more minutes,' she said.  'Then come in and warm up with a cup of soup by the radiator.'

We have had more adventures on our Armoured Bear all week, because it has been so cold he still hasn't melted, but that isn't the only fun in the snow we have had and I will have another post for you soon about what we did the following day,