Snow!!!

Yesterday the air was so bad (hazardous AQI) we could smell it: burned tires.  And taste it:  gritty poison.   We had "playground; cafe; store" on our list to do in the morning but the air was too awful.

When we were sitting in our complex's delightful European cafe (owned and run by an amazing Australian chef), it started to rain.  It poured the rest of the day, off and on.  Our dinner company arrived soaked having walked from the subway stop 10-15 minutes.  We wound up going to sleep very very late after our friend left.  So  I gave LiLi an 8 a.m. "earliest" for Sunday morning.  (On the weekends she'll happily get up at 6 despite that the weekday 6:30 wake up time can be challenging.  Hmmmm.)

This morning she came tearing out of her room and into my room ten minutes early to throw open the curtains and yell, "snow!!!!"

We decided to have coffee/hot cocoa before going outside but it seemed to be raining again so we hurried up to get out there, have a snowball fight and a build a mini-snowperson, urban style:

I love Beijing.