“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” John Ruskin

This is a sweet quote, and all, and normally I would agree. However, the weather (or lack of any change in the temperature) has left myself—and most of San Diego—in desperate need of reprieve from the mundane 108 degrees on Monday, 106 degrees Tuesday, and so on. I mean, for the love of all that is holy! It’s October! And it’s also been too hot to bake inside, something most of you know is a favorite pastime of mine, so we’ve taken to baking in the barbeque; we’re actually pretty good at it, too. Okay, reining myself back in before I go off on some incensed viral tirade about how I haven’t worn jeans or any variation of a shirt with sleeves since April; the heat is make it verrrrry difficult to practice my Fruit of the Spirit Challenge this week, so hopefully I can cool down—literally—by Friday. Anywho, the purpose for today’s update is to share with you all the joy I find in weather, and maybe I can pretend that I’m sitting in a pile of fluffy white snow and not contemplating dumping a bucket of ice over my head.

My younger sister, Katie, and I were discussing our favorite months while we baked (not literally, unfortunately) and made iced coffees in the kitchen. It got me reminiscing about what weather used to feel like, that moment in September when you look outside and suddenly know that autumn is here with winter close at its heels. As a kid when we lived in Colorado Springs, I always loved October. Each year on my birthday—tomorrow, by the way, and gifts are accepted!—it was always perfectly cool, and nearly every single birthday, there would be this incredible fine mist that would let you know winter was on its way, and I loved that.

Most of the leaves had fallen by then, leaving a carpet of reds and golds and pale yellows, though some golden-red stragglers still clung to the branches, swaying gently in the crisp passing breeze. Katie and I used to rake piles and piles of dried leave in our front yard and launch ourselves across the grass into the mounds. I even remember the smell in the autumn and early-winter air; somehow the crispness of the temperature heightened every incredible scent in around you, and the mulching leaves scattered in yards and across the street gave the air with this delicious, spicy aroma that made you think of pumpkin patches and hayrides and being a kid in autumn. Everything about it was, in all honesty, magical. When you’re young, everything is exciting and enchanting, and October was always that way for me, though I always looked forward to the coming of winter.

The first snow usually came in the middle of the night. Starting about a decade back, when Katie and I woke up in the morning in the Springs and saw that beautiful, powdery dusting of white spread over our small part of the world, we would smile at each other, grab a quilt—whether or not it was actually cold inside—beg our mom to let us have hot chocolate for breakfast, and then curl up on the couch together and sip our cocoa. It was our way of acknowledging the arrival of winter, and it was an even better excuse for some liquid chocolate. Then the first actual snow would hit, and by “actual” I mean enough powder for a kid to really play in, and it would send all the adults into panic mode because they weren’t sure if the roads were too icy to drive to work on before they realized that the driveway needed to be shoveled before they could even back the car out of the garage. But for us kids, that was when the world of fantasy was opened to us.

My sisters and I built forts the size of Smart cars that were connected to tunnels that went all over the deck, and we made ramps down the steep wooden stairway out back for smooth sailing on our boogie boards and sleds, though sometimes it was a little too smooth; Dad was a trooper and fixed the fence right up! Don’t underestimate the architectural genius and ability of a couple winter kids, though. We spent a solid week or more on some of the structures, and our igloos were so solid that someone could lie on the roof without it caving in or our dogs could barrel through the tunnels without knocking the walls loose. Ah, yes, we were quite the experts at snowmen and snow angels, as well. There was this insanely breathtaking hush that would fall over our part of the world when it snowed, a perfect quiet that—I don’t know—makes you want to smile or weep. It sounds silly, but it’s true. I remembering lying out front, the imprint of my half-finished angel beneath me, and I would just stare at the piles of snow on the branches above, filling my lungs with the exhilaratingly cold, crisp air and listening intently to the world around me. It was so perfectly quiet that every sound was distinct when the world slowed down like that, and it was then, lying on a powdery bed of white, my back wet with snow and my face warmed by the ever-present sun, that I would dream and imagine and create stories in my head. For me, the weather inspired me and opened this endless sea of possibilities. It was perfect for a kid who likes to dream.

The other day someone who had never seen snow before asked me with this terrified, wide-eyed gaze what it was like having to live with it? I just smiled and replied with one word: “Magical.”