OK-pay attention to what my sister is holding in her hands behind Kelcy. That would be Kelcy's homemade Jewlrey box. It had three drawers in it. And a handle on top. Said drawers were filled with exactly ten dollars in coins when we left the house.

To get from the front door of the house to where the Jeep was parked meant a 200 foot trek through the snow. Kelcy was walking through the snow behind me, and somehow the drawers juggled loose one at a time. As I was unlocking the Jeep, I heard this moan from her mother and then an urgent "Kelcy!"

I turned to see my sister hunched over in the snow, rapidly digging with her bare hands for the change from the first drawer. The very change that with each attempt to rescue it, just kept sinking deeper and deeper.

At that time, Uncle Tim did something very bad. He began to giggle.

Kelcy whirled around and confronted her uncle. "Uncle Tim, Its NOT funny!"

I was very scolded. A six year old can be very stern when she needs to be.

Unfortunately the whirling motion caused the last drawer full of pennies to tumble into the snow. Kelcy was this close to tears.

Uncle Tim joined his sister, hunched over in the snow, running bare hands through deep, frigid powder, trying to rescue all the coins.

The moisture from the snow began to cause the glue holding the jewlery box together to come apart. Kelcy was also on the verge of falling apart.

All day long I'd hyped the trip to the Hot Wheels Store, and the trip was unraveling before we'd even made it off the mountain.

Neither my sister nor I could feel our fingers. By the time we'd scooped up the last of the coins that we could find, $1.82 was missing.

But by the time we got to the Hot Wheels Store, Kelcy's $10 in change had magically grown to $17.

That's the cool thing about hanging out with your uncle, who even though he giggles at misfortune, sometimes he and his sister can make magic rise from tragedy.