by Heather Klassen © 2008
“Snow days are my favorite days ever,” Jake said as he scooped up another handful of snow.
“Yeah,” Enrique agreed. “No school! And it’s really cool that both of your dads and my mom could stay home. And that they’re all out here playing in the snow with us,” he added.
Jake looked over at his parents and Mrs. Villalobos, all digging in the snow like overgrown kids.
“I want hot cocoa!” Steven, Jake’s little brother, suddenly shouted.
“But that means somebody has to go inside to make it,” Daddy said, tossing a handful of snow at Steven. “And I want to stay out here and play.”
“I know,” Dad suggested. “We’ll have a contest. The losers will make the cocoa for everyone.”
“What kind of contest?” Emily, Jake’s sister, asked as she and Marta, Enrique’s sister, joined the group.
“A snowperson building contest,” Dad announced. “Largest snowperson wins. The teams will be grownups versus kids.”
Jake surveyed the group. “But that will be three grownups against five kids,” he pointed out. “Why don’t you guys take Steven? Then the teams will be even.” Jake shot his fathers a pleading look.
“No!” Steven protested. “I want to be with the kids!”
“You heard him, Jake,” Daddy replied. “Besides, we’re bigger than you, so it will even out. We’ll build in the side yard, and you guys build here. That way the result will be kept secret until the end. We’ll give it thirty minutes. Let’s go!”
As the parents headed toward the side of the house, Jake tromped over to Enrique. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried to get rid of Steven.”
“That’s okay,” Enrique replied. “He might not get in our way too much.”
“Let’s start building,” Marta urged, “so the grownups don’t get a head start on us.”
“We’ll all have to work together to win this contest,” Jake said. “Enrique and I will roll the largest snowball for the bottom of the snowperson. Emily and Marta, you two roll the middle snowball and Steven, you can start on the head. Make the balls as big as you can, guys. Let’s get rolling!’
Jake and Enrique hurried toward one corner of the yard, while Marta and Emily headed toward the opposite corner. Both teams began by forming a small snowball.
Then Jake and Enrique worked together, rolling their ever-growing snowball around the yard.
“This is getting heavy,” Jake said after a while, as the boys strained to push their now huge snowball.
“We need to get it to the middle of the yard to meet up with the girls,” Enrique replied. “It’s going to be gigantic by the time we get there!”
Jake paused in his pushing when he spotted Steven rolling his own snowball. Steven’s snowball is a pretty decent size too, Jake thought.
As Jake and Enrique reached the middle of the yard with their huge snowball, their sisters joined them, rolling up with their own, almost as large, snowball.
“Wow,” Enrique said, admiring the girls’ work. “That’s huge, too. We’re totally going to win.”
Steven, abandoning the snowperson’s head in the yard, hurried over to examine the two enormous snowballs.
“Okay,” Jake said. “It’s time to put the pieces together. We might need all four of us to lift the middle part of our snowperson.”
“Five of us!” Steven called out. “You forgot me!”
“Right,” Jake agreed. “Five of us. Okay, everybody, grab and lift.”
All five kids placed their gloved hands beneath the snowperson’s midsection and strained to lift it. But the huge snowball didn’t budge.
“We can’t lift it!” Marta exclaimed.
“It’s too huge,” Enrique said. “Now what?”
“If we can’t put our snowperson together, we can’t win,” Emily pointed out.
“I’ll bet our snowballs are bigger than anything our parents are making,” Jake said. “So we would win if we could just put our snowperson together. What are we going to do?”
Jake, Enrique, Emily, and Marta all stood and stared at the two huge snowballs. Steven didn’t stand and stare. He jumped up and down, instead.
“I know what to do!” he shouted.
“Shh, Steven, we’re trying to think of a way to solve this problem,” Jake said. “Don’t distract us.”
“But I know what to do,” Steven insisted.
“Tell me,” Emily said, bending down so Steven could whisper into her ear.
Emily listened to Steven, then jumped up. “That’s a great idea! Listen, everybody.”
Emily quickly explained Steven’s idea, and everyone quickly agreed to do it. Enrique, Marta, and Emily stayed to work on the two large snowballs, while Jake and Steven ran to retrieve the head and find rocks and sticks to form the eyes, nose, and mouth.
Just as they completed the head, Jake heard Dad calling, “Time’s up! Come see our gigantic snowperson!”
The kids hurried to the side yard, where their parents proudly displayed a large snowperson, formed by three snowballs, one on top of the other.
“That’s nice,” Emily said.
“It’s pretty big,” Marta commented.
“But not as big as ours!” Steven shouted.
“Let’s go see,” Mrs. Villalobos said.
The entire group trooped into the front yard and gathered around the kids’ snowperson. The kids’ gigantic snowperson.
“It’s bigger than ours, all right,” Daddy admitted.
“But it’s lying down!” Dad exclaimed.
“No one said it had to be a standing snowperson,” Jake pointed out.
“Our snowballs were too heavy to lift,” Marta explained.
“We thought we had lost for sure,” Emily continued.
“Until Steven came up with the idea that won it for us,” Enrique concluded.
Everyone, grownups and kids, looked at Steven.
Steven smiled. “I’d like extra marshmallows in my cocoa, please.”
Everyone laughed, even Jake. I’m glad Steven was on our team after all, Jake thought. It just goes to show that solutions can be found in the most unlikely places sometimes.
“Come on, Steven, I’ll pull you on your sled while the grownups make the cocoa,” Jake offered.
“Yeah!” Steven shouted, smiling at his brother.
Jake smiled too, knowing that he and his little brother still had hours left to play on this totally great snow day.
Copyright © 2008 by Heather Klassen.
All rights reserved.
About the Author: Heather Klassen lives with her family in
Edmonds
,
Washington
. She has been writing fiction for children and teenagers for the past twenty years and has had several books and hundreds of stories published in numerous magazines and anthologies. In addition to writing, she works part-time with children. Besides her favorite hobbies of reading and spending time with her family, she is an avid swimmer, having just learned how to swim four years ago.
