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Many years ago my darling husband and I gave up fighting winter snows and ice and moved south. Finally, after an especially hard winter, we gave away our snowplow and left the state to bask in the sunny warmth of sandy beaches all year round.

We left Connecticut with our memories of shoveling our driveway trying to clear off seemingly endless snowfalls. We never looked back.

Even the hurricanes we’ve lived through in our new home state of Florida are less uncomfortable than freezing in a house without electricity as we did each winter after an ice storm downed the electrical wires. If I ever get sentimental about our life in New England, I only have to remember what it felt like to sit on an ice-cold toilet seat in the dead of winter when the heat was off.

So what ever made us spend our Christmas and New Year holidays in the southwestern mountains where the temperature drops into the single digits overnight? Not only that, but we’re actually praying for snow to fall and cover our mountainsides.

No, we haven’t lost our minds the way you might assume.

It’s just that we’re crazy in love with our two grandsons, eleven and thirteen years of age, who have spent the past months since summer telling us they wanted to learn how to snowboard.

It’s true, we all have to repeat the mistakes of the past. They’ve been told how terrible the winters were and why we and their parents left the cold north to defrost in the comfort of the southern sun all year long.

But boys will be boys, even if they are Florida kids. They’ve never experienced the icy cold sting of frozen noses and fingers. To them, it’s an adventure they yearned to have. To us, it was wanting to give them the holiday they wished for.

Spoiled is the word we hear a lot when we tell people where we go and what we do with our grandsons. What most people don’t realize is that their happiness makes us happy. We’re not just giving, we’re getting as well. Their parents are in charge of making certain they behave themselves and not take anything fore granted. Grandparents are another story.

Grandparents can’t spoil their grandchildren. Kids know that we’re just putty in their hands. They also know who their true bosses are, their parents. Fortunately, we’ve not had to monitor their behavior. Their parents are doing a good job because they’re good kids even when their parents aren’t around. That makes it a lot of fun to be with them.

For instance, even when they were tots and we took them to the toy store and told them they could only have one toy each, that’s what they got. They didn’t whine or carry on. What they did, was shop — for what seemed like hours on this grandmother’s feet — until they found the one true toy they really wanted. As they grew older and went to school, they would read every word on the boxes in the stores, making sure that what they were buying was what they wanted.

This Christmas was no different.

They got only one toy each, but they also got to go skiing with their parents. Ha, you didn’t think we went down the slopes with them, did you? We might be crazy in love with them, but we’re not that crazy. This is one vacation where our grandchildren and their parents got to share the thrill of learning to ski together.

It may be winter outside, but our cozy casita in the mountains is where we’re waiting for their return. We’re spending our time reading books and enjoying the quiet time until the skiers come back home to us. Then we’ll all share hot chocolate and fresh-baked cookies and look at the photos they’ve taken on the trails.

That’s winter enough for us.

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E-mail Barbara Bova at: babova@naplesnews.com.