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It was a wild day for the children of Del Ray, a neighborhood where stroller safety dominates Listserv discussions. No school, lots of snow, and moms and dads willing to do away with all those rules about sugar intake. With the help of on-the-ground TBD reporter Sarah Godfrey, The List chronicles how Alexandria parents got through today’s snow day.

1. Consume sugar in never-before-seen amounts

   “We’re a pretty low-sugar household,” says Tara Cubie, mother to a 4-and-a-half year-old girl. “Eating cookies and hot chocolate on a weekday, that would never happen.” Yet Cubie is sending her daughter to a neighbor’s for cookies and hot chocolate this afternoon. “Our rule around here is everything in moderation is OK,” she says.

2. Eat junk food

   Danielle Robinson and her 4-year-old son took dad to the Metro and then stopped at McDonald's “for a special snow day treat.” Robinson says she limits her son’s fast food intake to once or maybe twice a month, but a snow day is not the time to be a stickler. “We try to make it special,” she says.

3. Watch TV with reckless abandon

   Robinson also broke her no-TV-on-weekdays rule and let her son watch Mickey Mouse Club to his heart’s content. “I don’t know if watching a bunch of TV is all that great for him, but he seems happy,” she concedes.

4. Throw some snow pants on and get out there

   Nathan, a Del Ray father of two, tries not to make the snow day more complicated than it needs to be. “It’s not that hard when it’s like this,” he says. “You just throw the snow pants on them and bring them outside.” Lunch at Caboose to follow.

5. Encourage sculpture, athletics, and engineering through snow

   Del Ray mom Diana says her kids have been in a 15-kid snowball fight and engaging in various skill-enhancing snow activities. Daughter Bridget, 11, has used the snow productively. “Last night I made a dog out of snow in front of our house,” she says, “and my brother and I have been making forts and snowballs.”

6. Draw hope from the good hearts of the children

   One man ended up shoveling snow alongside three neighborhood kids, none of them his own. “They’re some hard-working young men,” he says of the elementary-aged children. “You don’t see that anymore. I grew up in this neighborhood — my mother still lives here — and when my brother and I were kids, you’d run out of the house to help people shovel. You don’t see that anymore.” He adds, “I hope if I do have kids, they’ll be like these kids.”