First Snow! Is it Spring Yet?

I was woken up this morning by Aaron and Peter jumping onto my bed and announcing "There's snow on the ground, Mom!  Can we go outside and play?".  I could hardly even make out their faces in the dark, but I could tell that they were excited, and we made plans to go outside and play in the snow together after everyone was dressed and had eaten breakfast.  All during breakfast, the boys chattered about building a snowman and digging in the snow.  The past few years have not been incredibly fun when it came to playing in the snow - either they were very unhappy with how cold it was, couldn't walk through the snow in their thick snowpants, or they didn't want to play outside without Mom, who was inside with a newborn.  I thought that maybe this year would be different - Nate is walking and might have a lot of fun in the snow, and the two older boys are becoming more independent.  Yay for snow!  I imagined hours of happy play in the white powder, throwing snowballs and building forts. 
After breakfast, everyone got changed and I pulled out all the snow stuff - snowpants, extra coats, mittens, hats, winter boots times four.  The older two were impatient to get dressed and get outside, so I took turns helping them get dressed and after a bit of arguing, they were both suited up and I sent them outside while I got Nate and myself ready.  I could hear them arguing outside already, and by the time I had Nate ready, Aaron was screaming bloody murder that his mitten had fallen off and he wanted to come in.  I plopped Nate on the deck beside him, stuck Aaron's mitten back on and told him I'd be outside in ONE minute, just let me get my boots on.  While I was getting my boots on, I heard Nate crying and I couldn't see him on the deck - Peter had come up on the deck and nicely let Nate escape down the snow-covered stairs - and the poor kid had already managed to do a face-plant in the snow on the grass.  I ran over there without my coat, picked him up and dusted him off but his mittens were already filled with snow and his face was covered in snow.  He was very far from amused.  Meanwhile, Aaron had lost another mitten and just sniff wanted sniff to go sniff insiiiiiiide.  Nate's crying escalated into screaming and his boogers were running down his chin.  Since his mittens were irreparably snowy, I gave up with him and decided to take him and Aaron inside.  Welcome to winter, Nate, wasn't that fun.  I ran him inside, plopped him in the pack and play, and left him crying for a few moments while I searched out a snow shovel to shovel a path for Aaron to get to the side door so he wouldn't track all kinds of snow into the kitchen.  I let him inside and pulled off all his snowy stuff.  How is it that three minutes of being outside in the snow has to make everything disproportionately wet?  In any case, everything was soaked, which is unfortunate because we need to put them all on again at lunchtime to drop Peter off at school.  Lovely.  Once teary Aaron was undressed and inside, and complaining about wet socks, Peter knocked on the door and informed me that it was no fun to play outside by himself and he wanted to come in too.  Well, why not.  Who wants to play in the snow, anyways?  
So we've now had our first snowfall of the season - kind of crazy that January 13 is the first time it's been cold enough to have snow on the ground.  Forty minutes of getting everyone dressed and ready to play outside, thirty-seven seconds of playing outside, and four hours to get everything dry again.  I think I'm just about ready for spring now.