WORDS TO USE: snowman – chili- pony – crying – red

“Mommie! Mommie!” Abigail cried out as she ran into the kitchen. “Come quick!”

Amanda glanced up in mild concern from the stove where she stood stirring chili for the family’s dinner. She didn’t panic. That hadn’t been her four-year-old daughter’s cry of pain. No, Abigail tended to yell out loudly whenever she was excited about something and wanted attention.

She set the stirring spoon down and focused on her beloved daughter. “What’s up, honey?” Inwardly, she sighed, seeing the snow melting off Abigail’s boots onto the freshly cleaned tile floor. She didn’t know why she bothered cleaning the floor from the first snowfall of the year until spring. If it wasn’t Abigail racing into the kitchen all wet or muddy, it was her seven-year-old twin brothers. Or her husband: the biggest kid of them all.

Abigail shifted from foot to foot impatiently, a tiny frown furrowing her forehead. “Mommie, hurry!”

From outside in the backyard, Amanda heard her sons shrieking in delight, even as they protested, giggling, about Tippy chasing them. What on earth was their ornery pony doing so close to the house? And where was their father?

“Do I even want to ask how Tippy…” She shook her head and turned off the stove. “Get Mommie’s coat, sweetheart.”

Abigail sped toward the mudroom; her head full of red curls dancing around her bare head. Where was her knitted hat? And where were her matching gloves?

In a flash, her daughter raced back into the kitchen, dragging Amanda’s coat behind her, wiping up the trail of snowy water from Abigail’s boots. She sighed again, but forced a smile as she took the coat.

She barely had it on and was zipping it up when Abigail grabbed the hem of the coat and tried dragging her to the back door.

“Hurry, Mommie! Daddy needs you.”

At those words, Amanda’s smile of amusement faded. “Is Daddy hurt? Why didn’t you tell me that first?” She nudged her suddenly slow-moving daughter into movement.

Abigail cocked her head in confusion as she looked up. “Daddy isn’t hurt. He’s trying to keep Tippy from smashing Fred.”

As they walked outside into the freezing cold, lightly snowing day, Amanda asked, “Who is Fred?”

“Our snowman. He’s huge, Mommie!” Abigail spread her arms as wide as they could go and grinned in delight.

She wasn’t really surprised. Her kids—and their dad—seemed to name everything. From the family van to his enormous truck, to even the lawnmower.

“Thank the good Lord,” Jason called out in relief. “Get hold of Tippy. You and the boys need to get her back to the barn.”

Amanda almost asked why the pony was even here, but gave up. With her wild bunch, there would be all kinds of excuses. But she couldn’t seem to move, gaping at her six-foot-four-inch, muscle-bound husband all but draped in protection over the fattest, tallest snowman she’d ever seen. A snowman with Abigail’s knitted hat balanced precariously on Fred’s head and her small gloves dangling from two stick arms.

She was about to laugh when all three of her kids began pelting her with snowballs. As she turned to give them all her mother’s evil eye—not that they ever cared about it—Tippy trotted over and pushed her down into the six inches of snow face first.

As she came up spitting and grabbing for snow to make a snowball herself, Jason laughed. A hearty laugh that seemed to come clear from his big feet.

So much for “helping” him. She finished her snowball and launched it at him. The snowball war was on!