I admire people who are able to write on their calendar with ink. It’s a pencil and lots of eraser marks on our calendar — if we even bother writing anything down at all. Our visit to Texas was no different. The weather forecast had called for 80 degrees around Galveston — and so we made our plans: Pleasure Pier, the Alamo, and Houston’s Space Center.

It was closer to 50 degrees when we arrived, and soon to hit the teens. We had rented a lovely old historic home just off the beach in Galveston — a lovely old home that wasn’t equipped for the freak winter storm that suddenly descended upon the southern portion of the United States. It wasn’t long before the temperatures were lower than they had been in NYC. Even with long johns and wool socks we were cold — outside as well as in.

Thankfully, we managed to go to the Alamo before the snow hit. It was such a strange feeling to stand in a place where legends had died, and history began. Life was so much different then; boys became men much sooner. Several of the “men” that died there were only 15 — the same age as my oldest. Walking in the places where Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie fought an died, I have a feeling my kids will always “Remember the Alamo.”

Galveston’s famous Pleasure Pier was next on our list — but since it closed due to weather, we stayed inside where it was … also not warm. Even inside we were wearing long johns, wrapped in blankets and drinking cocoa. We shivered, hoping the Space Center in Houston would be heated well.

That evening we got our first weather alert. Galveston was forecast to get 8 inches of snow. They were asking people to stay inside, as many roads were going to be shut down — and we were supposed to fly home in two days. We tried unsuccessfully to bump our flight up a day, thinking we could get ahead of the storm. When that didn’t work, we just made more cocoa and decided to watch “Apollo 11.”

The blast of warm air as we stepped through the doors of Houston’s Space Center felt amazing. It was a great field trip and fun to see (and go inside) a life-size replica of the Space Shuttle Independence piggybacking on one of the original NASA 905 shuttle carrier aircraft.

It was interesting to walk through the samples vault, seeing slices of moon rocks that various expeditions had brought back, all preserved in pure nitrogen. The lunar touchstone was also displayed. It’s a rock that was brought back from the moon (or a Hollywood soundstage, if that’s what you believe) by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972 that people are allowed to touch.

That evening, our bags were all packed, our flight was still on — we were heading home. That’s when Life’s Eraser popped up like Punxsutawney Phil. It started to snow. Houston, we have a problem. The entire city shut down. Including Walmart, the Waffle House — and of course the airport.

I’ve never seen so many adults so twitterpated about snow. But I guess when you live on the beach …

Many of the people we talked to had never seen snow in real life. It was quite the experience: We saw people wearing makeshift snow gear made from garbage can liners, we saw kids sled in cardboard Amazon boxes — one lady was even trying to sled on a paddleboard.

It was pretty cool, though — after all, how often does one see snow on palm trees? So we switched gears from “Apollo 11” to “Frozen” as my husband sing-songed “do you wanna build a snowman?” while we built our first snowman of 2025 — in southern Texas. Guess the Alamo isn’t the only thing we’ll remember about Texas.

Brianna Walker writes occasionally about the Farmer’s Fate for the Blue Mountain Eagle.