When I was young, cousin Dan and I used to build snow forts in the drifts caused by the city snow plows. If you built your fort at the intersection of the street and driveway, you started with a fabulously deep drive of snow, making for a superior snow fort.

Of course, having a fort is no fun if you don't have someone else to hide from, so we would try to taunt the neighbors into throwing snowballs at us. I remember one year we added holes in the fort with ramps down to a snow ball cache basin. If someone actually hit the fort right in one of the holes, our theory was the snow ball would roll down the ramp and into our supply bin.

We never did get any free snowballs that way.

As one gets older, of course, what was once a fabulously deep pile of snow turns out to be not so deep after all. Either that, or we get a lot less snow than we used to.

But still, this has turned out to be a white Christmas. It's beautiful out there right now. I don't even mind plowing the driveway. Over and over. Fresh snow every few days has been fabulous.

But January approaches. I'm sure we'll all be freezing our tushies off soon enough.