Snow flakes keep falling on my head....

I saw my first snow falling this morning and I was quite excited. My brother Boyd picked me up from the airport around midnight with my nephew and niece, Eric and Jordyn. After a long drive home through snow I got to sleep in bed at around 3am. Not surprisingly, at 7 when the kids got up for school I didnät really want to know about it, but the mention of falling snow woke me instantly to stand at the window before passing out on my bed again a minute later. SO exciting!!
It's heaps nice to be in Sweden with my brother and his family. Way different to Australia... snowed roads and gardens, spikey tyres, houses that stay a nice constantly warm 20 degrees no matter how chilly outside is (hopefully).
I hadn't seen my youngest nephew Nathaniel (or Nanel) since October and he's just turned 2 so I wasn't sure if he'd know who I was. I thought it might be weird for him, I mean, he goes to bed one night and then wakes up with this big bloke in his house. Anyway, at 7 this morning he comes in, looking at me saying 'lum, lum, lum' Jordyns saying ,'It's uncle Ben, it's uncle Ben' and finally he runs off to my sister-in-law Tanya saying 'It's Uncle Ben, it's uncle Ben, uncle Ben!!' Cute.... he's the man, sporting a Maggie Simpson style jumpsuit when we go out, and eating tea with knife and fork (not in the right hands but I was impressed), he is the man!!
Scarily enough I see slight similarities between myself and Eric who is about to turn 9. At about 8:30 this egg timer goes off next to my head. In a tired stupor I tried to pull the thing apart so it would shut up. It eventually stops and I put it down and drop off again. This is the same kid who has scared me more than anybody, and taken years off my life with a rubber spider when they visited in October. I feel like kicking him into next week yet I'm so proud of him :) Keep up the good work... just don't practise on me. What will he do tomorrow?
Not surprisingly he couldn't help but ask if I heard the egg timer when we dropped in at their school, ggrrr! Tanya drops in each week to Eric and Jordyns classes to help/lead the English lesson. I was the well advertised visitor for Eric's class today. It's surprisingly funny being this big Australian in a class full of little Swedish kids. They went around the class introducing themselves, and I couldn't pronounce half there names even after a few attempts. They roll their 'R's' and no matter how hard I try I just can't do it. It was fun. We played Simon says and surprisingly I was the worst person at it. I'm glad I passed grade 3 first time around. I'm rather envious of all the school kids. When we rocked up they were runnning around flat out in the school yard in falling snow making snow men, having snow fights, this one little kid was carrying a snow ball that was wider than his shoulders, rolling big snow balls like you see in the cartoons, sliding around and taking each other out. Such fun, I can't believe I missed out as a kid :( ! Fortunately, lots more snow is predicted, and dry snow at that. None of this 1 degree slightly slushy snow (I never new there was a difference), the weather man predicts in the minus's down to -15 on Tuesday. Brrrrr!! Can't wait.