Area residents woke up Sunday to a rare sight indeed - snow on the ground the day after Christmas.
And better yet, at least for funseekers, there was no bright sunshine or warm temperatures to melt it away.

Weather conditions became the perfect recipe for sledding, snowball fights or just a winter stroll, as much as you could stand against brisk afternoon winds.

"We love it. I don't ever remember having a white Christmas," said Julie Colombini, a resident of Virginia Circle in Gainesville.

She and her husband, Pablo, their two children, Nico and Luca, and their dog, Sam, walked to nearby Roper Park to play in the snow.

"Every year, when it snows, we come here, as do a lot of people," she said. "... We have four dogs and they tear up the backyard, so we don't have a lot of snow left."

Her husband is from Argentina, "so it's summer down there," Colombini said. "Our nieces and nephews were in a swimming pool yesterday."

Two 12-year-old Gainesville friends, Jackson Fox and Dawson Lawler, spent part of Sunday afternoon shooting down a steep hill at City Park on their Styrofoam sleds.

They were concerned a bit on Saturday when the snow had stopped falling for a while.

The boys had their Sunday fun planned out, saying they planned to visit a neighbor's house later for more sledding and perhaps a snowball fight or two.
Jackson said the neighbor's property is an ideal spot because "it collects a lot of snow."

The fun began for Kip Wing and his friends as soon as the snow began falling Saturday.

"We all go up to North Carolina whenever it snows and snowboard, (but this time) we just went over to Gainesville High School and hit the hills over by the track," the longtime Gainesville resident said Sunday.

The group had planned to do some hiking on Sunday.

"We thought it was going to snow some more," Wing said, let down by Sunday's lack of flakes. "It's depressing."