We lived outside of Cleveland Ohio for 34 years. If snow was that bad, we wouldn't have lasted that long. When our children were in school and we were working, winter passed quickly and we didn't mind it. We looked forward to the blizzards and snow events and the unusually cold weather (minus 25 degrees was the coldest). We just got out the Chinese checkers, Monopoly and Scrabble and played marathon rounds of each game. We lived next to a park where the rangers would build fires in barrels at the top of the sledding hills. Sledding went on day and night, probably 9 am to midnight. As adults, our kids always went sledding on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, when there was snow. Even after they married, they all went to the park to sled. But they all moved away, we retired and the winters began to be something we dreaded. Mostly, we dreaded the long gray days and the gray Lake Erie to match. In 2007 I said, "I don't think I can look at the gray sky and the gray lake all winter". We left for Florida soon after and visited everyone who had ever said, "Come for a visit". And that was the year we discovered The Villages.
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