The buses were canceled this morning.

The first buzz beside my bed was from our morning walking group chat.

“No buses. Staying home. Going back to bed.”

They were the first on the ball. Next came the official notice from the bus driver: canceled. Stay warm.

Of course my little early bird was already out on the couch, tucked under a mountain of blankets, sipping chocolate milk and watching cartoons. Her excitement faltered for only a moment.

“But what about my hot lunch?”

This girl misses nothing.

Once we’d established that there would be other hot lunch days, the excitement settled in for good. Hadn’t we just been talking about snow days? Grandma and Grandpa in Ontario had gone nearly two weeks buried under drifts. Now, it was our turn.

Back in the day, it would have been my dad alerting us to a snow day. He’d already have been at work for hours when he called the landline, telling one of us to turn on the radio. We’d sit on the edge of my parents’ bed as districts were listed off one by one, fingers crossed ours would make it.

Now I simply open the app, and my daughter’s favorited bus number appears on the home screen. This morning, it was red.

Canceled.

Outside the kitchen window, light began to creep through the trees, illuminating a fresh world of white. When we went to sleep, a slick sheet of melt had coated the driveway — a week’s worth of thaw promising change. Now it hid beneath two feet of snow.

Drifts swallowed the tires of the trucks in the driveway. The barbecue on the deck wore a tall white hat against the vast stillness.

Back to winter, it was.

So we bundled up.

Snow days aren’t quiet in the way you expect. The world outside is hushed, yes — but inside there’s an energy that spills out the door with us. Boots thud against the mat. Mittens are mismatched. Zippers tugged high beneath chins.

That first step into the yard was deeper than we thought. Winslow disappeared into a drift before we’d made it a few feet from the door, hip-checked by a bear dog thrilled by sudden human life. Snow swallowed boots whole.

The path we’d spent all winter packing down was gone — erased as if it had never been there.

The animals had been readied the day before.

Deep beds of straw laid into shelters. Water troughs filled to the brim. Grain bins topped up for warming bellies. Still, the donkeys called from across the yard to remind us they were there, knee-deep and unimpressed.

From the pig house came the faint sound of snores — no sign of them until the weather softened again. Tree boughs bent low beneath the weight of the new snow.

Eventually, cheeks red and mittens soaked through, we made our way back inside. Boots piled by the door. Snow melting into puddles on the mat.

So we came back in.

And we sat.