This is my third year being in Toronto over the holidays, and I still don't think I'll ever get used to how green it is so close to Christmas. How much of it is global warming I wonder, versus how much of it is simply the bizarre, abnormal temperatures that face Toronto?

For me (and I'm sure many others as well), Christmas just isn't Christmas without snow. Despite the fact that I am a hardcore Christmas fanatic, it still seems difficult to get in the spirit and get decorating without that snow to spur me forward.

It's snowing out right now, but even that isn't enough. It's more the type of snowfall we should have been getting in late October or early November. Not a week and a half before Christmas. I want to be able to go out and have a snowball fight, build snowmen, make snow angels. I want to build snowforts that say No Boys Allowed, while the boys build ones with No Girls Allowed. Sure, that's a little childish, but I don't care how old you get, I still think its fun. 

I miss the winters of my childhood, when there would be so much snow that it would cover the fences at the back of my family's yard and our neighbour's yard, turning it into one giant backyard. I miss when the plows used to have to make a giant hill in the loop of our street because they had no-where else to put it, and we could build one massive fort, and go sledding right out our front door. 

I remember the days when Murray's Mountain was the biggest family sledding hill in Orangeville, and the Sugar Bowl was only taken on by the brave sledders who weren't afraid of wiping out regularily and who held no fear of the forest that lingered on the edge of the Bowl. 

Man. I really need to decorate this apartment.