Het heeft gesneeuwd!

Snow gathering on the balcony railing in the kind-of-gloominess of yesterday.

Which is Dutch for "It snowed!"

Yesterday was only the fourth time it got below freezing all year.  And it was also the first snow!  It wasn't very much snow but it was real snow.  And it stuck.  I am very, very delighted.  It is supposed to stay under freezing (around 30 degrees) all the rest of the week, too.  For what it's worth, all this week it is going to be around 20 to 25 up in Friesland, which does say good things about freezing stuff, maybe.

I went for a walk in the snow in the afternoon.  It was pleasant, a little chilly, and it finally felt like winter.

As I was walking down the street, I noticed that all of the cars had been cleaned off in a peculiar pattern.  The side windows, the hoods, and the trunks had been cleaned off.  However, for the rear windows and windshields, only the outside edges had been cleaned up.  At first I couldn't figure out why this was so.  Then I saw little kids running around and realized that the cleaned areas of snow were where they had scrapped off all the show that they could reach, so that they could have snow ball fights.  There were kids out all over the place, running around, chasing each other with handfuls of snow.  They seemed to really be enjoying themselves.  Even the adults seemed to be in a particularly festive mood.  Snow is good stuff.

This morning, with snow sparkling in the sunshine.