It was finally my favorite season, and winter was bringing in a lot of snow for the 2008 year. This is one memory I will never forget.

The snow fell hard one Thursday after school. It was very clear that tomorrow would be a snow day. I tried my hardest, with tears streaming down my face, to get Mom to let me go over to Haley’s with Hannah. After begging for over an hour, my parents finally gave in.

Geralyn, Hale’s mom, arrived not long after that. I leaped in the car. Hannah was already in there anxiously waiting. Telling by the looks on my best friends’ faces, just might be a really fun and long weekend!

As we arrived to Hale’s the snowfall picked up quickly. We didn’t do much that night but lay around and laugh. We all knew that the real fun would be when the parents were gone the next day. Sure enough, school was cancelled. Excited, we decided to celebrate with a little sledding.

We gathered all of our gear. We wore hats, gloves, scarves, and big overalls to keep us warm. Of course, I wore the old camouflaged Carhartt overalls. After we decided that we “rocked the new look,” so we headed out to the snow covered hills.

We sat our sleds down, after rescuing Cruiser, Haley’s dog, from walking on the iced pond. We heard the sound of Hale’s brother Zach’s four-wheeler in the woods. We kept doing our own thing and having fun. Going up and down the hill sure was tiring, but we didn’t care. It was the last time going down and we all piled onto the bright red sled. We went so fast we drifted off the trail and into the weeds. As we laughed more and more we almost peed our pants. Obviously, Hale failed to control herself. She was the one who had the accident. Her pants were so wet. I couldn’t help but laugh at her. At least she was laughing too. We slowly walked back up the hill dragging the sled. We still laughed hard, and it was tough to walk straight. We flopped down at the top of the hill like a sack of potatoes. We didn’t lay there long because of the disturbance of the sound of Zach riding closer and closer out of the woods. He drove up the hill scaring us half to death. He quickly did a donut blowing snow all in our faces.

After that, I rode with Zach to the church on the four-wheeler. He did so many donuts; I nearly fell off. On the ride back to Hale’s, we almost wrecked into Brigham who was riding wheelies. The day ended well. I had the best time.

I learned that you should never take anything for granted because you never know when someone will be gone. All you have to do is live each day as it comes and to the fullest. Life itself is not even close to being the same. Zach left the earth with many people loving him and with a well lived life. This is definitely one of my favorite memories of Zach and my friends, one I’ll never forget.