silver lining

i don't really know if i'm quite ready for the slushy white stuff.
especially because we've woken up to it for two mornings in a row.
it stinks to add an extra ten minutes of coats and boots whenever trying to get out the door.
which in this house, is often.
and mucking through slushy parking lots while errand running.
bleh. yuck.

but it sure is pretty.
and like most everything inconvenient, there's a silver lining, like...

fuzzy slippers and sherpa boots
extra blankets on the beds for snuggling at night
a cozy house
kids (especially little ones) in snow pants and all the gear
turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and pie
never being too hot (which for me, is always)
craft projects at the kitchen table
fire in the fireplace
movies and sherpa blankets on the couch
organizing inside instead of yard work on the outside
creamy soup - well, any kind of soup really
thick, soft scarves (i found the coolest one today!)
beanies that make my dirty hair instantly cute
christmas!
quilting and crocheting
snow angels and sledding
every single little tree branch decorated with flakes
and the hundreds of photos of the tree branches decorated with flakes

oh ya, it all sounds lovely.
but most especially, i'm ready for this...

hot chocolate baby.

in the morning,

or any time at all.

quirky bits

it is a well-known fact, for those who know me best, that i wear flip-flops year round. mostly it's because of spiders - i know, i know, i need therapy, but long story short, i just really prefer an open-toed shoe. in fact, i really only own one pair of socks. besides the spider factor, my feet are rarely ever cold and a little snow on the toes really doesn't bother me at all. last monday april came over for a visit to find me shovelling the driveway in my flip-flops.she found it humorous enough to take a photo and commented about how it's just "so wende". she's right, and it's such an accurate "portait" of me and my quirky tendancies that i had to post it, you know, for posterity and all. (and yes, that's ethan's new tiny shovel - i swear it works better than the big ones for clearing those last little bits of ice). by the way, i do wear closed-toed shoes some times and i especially love slippers for around the house.

**tell me about the qurirky bits of you!**

**do you have a fear of naked toes meeting arachnid in the dark unseen spaces of your shoe?**

progress

we were pounded by a couple of mother snow storms this past week and i'm so happy because it's finally looking like christmas around here! it's probably very cliche, but i swear it just isn't that same without the fluffy white stuff. i know snow is supposed to be some kind of big pain, but i've never really minded it, it's just part of life in utah. allie suited ethan up for some snow play and i knew we had already made leaps and bounds of progress when he let her put on his snow pants and boots! last year, he strongly objected any time the snow pants made an appearance. lately, he is really into doing whatever the older kids are doing, and knowing that the big kids were going to be doing a lot of shovelling soon, i bought him his own tiny snow shovel the other day at target.it's a huge hit except that he was shovelling the snow from the grass to the side walk.oh well, that will come eventually right? allie had to bribe him to come back in the house, even after more than an hour, he was not ready to come inside. and since he loved the disneyland rides so much, i'm thinking that our next step is sledding. p.s. all of these photos are courtesy of taylor who treked out into the snow with the camera because his mother didn't want to. -thanks taylor!

snow enduced claustrophobia

i was feeling so sick of the dang snow yesterday when i woke up and found a few more inches needed to be shoveled. especially because the weather man said of our storm a few days ago that it was the last one for a while. HE LIED! i feel like the only memory i am going to have of this winter is of me shoveling the driveway. i'm grateful for the water, but wow, none of it is melting and i feel like pretty soon i'm not going to have any place to throw it! i was feeling so sick of the dang snow until i went to eileen's yesterday for her to tend ethan. she lives further up on the "benches" than we do and wow, what a difference in the amount of snow they get! i was kicking myself that i didn't have my camera! so today i was up there again and this time i came prepared. this is the parking lot by their condo, i had ethan stand there next to it so you could see how tall it is, it's insane! look at the giant snow plow mark next to ethan, it's small compared to the size of this mound. and, it goes all around the entire condo complex! talk about claustrophobic! i'm going to be grateful that we have gotten about half this amount and stop complaining about the snow.

**do you have to shovel snow taller than you can throw?**

**do you think we should invest in a snow blower?

hope! - UPDATED 2/4!

"this february 2nd at 12:20 and 7 seconds, punxsutawney phil, seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators...emerged reluctantly, but alertly, in punxsutawney, pennsylvania, and stated in groundhogese...i definitely do not see a shadow!!!!" he predicted an early spring! how could that possibly be with all this snow laying around here? well, we can keep our fingers crossed that the germans really know how to spin an old wives tale.

**how do you feel about groundhog day?**

**did you watch bill murray today?**

**EDIT! after patsy's comment i looked into it a little further and found that on the actual punxsutawney phil website (yes he has one) that he did declare six more weeks of winter! i originally saw the story on yahoo and they had gotten their facts wrong! i'm so bummed! not that i was really putting all my faith in an oversized rhodent, but it was nice to have a glimmer of hope. six more weeks of winter? sheesh? we're going to be hunting easter eggs in the snow! sorry to raise your hopes...

silver lining

i think i may have said somewhere on my blog recently that i really don't mind the snow, it's just part of living here in utah and besides we need the water - real bad. and you know, this is mostly true, at least it was before i lived through our current winter season. as of today, i think i have finally had my fill of the fluffy cold white stuff. and you know, it's not even so much the snow as it is the bitter freezing cold temperatures which make me think, "do i really need groceries today?" i think part of my winter blues is coming from feeling trapped in the house, i'm ready to play again. the kids however, have found the silver lining and it's called sledding almost every day. it's called a snow fort in our front yard built mostly by the boys and their friends. complete with a deep hole for storing snow balls. it started as a way to hide and throw snow balls at the mean boys who walk passed our house on their way home from school. the mean boys are a blog for another day, and even though they deserve a good snow ball flogging, i am the grown up and had to help the kids see why this was not such a good idea. the last thing i need are mean boys' mothers on my telephone. so, it became just a cool place to hang out, or rather, a freezing place to hang out. i was shocked today when i drove up my street to see how high the piles of shoveled snow are getting, and it's not even close to being over, it's only january! where are we going to put the rest of it when it comes? and speaking of shoveling, the fort is so high that today when i was trying to clear the driveway, i couldn't throw the snow high enough and it kept sliding back down -ahhh! at least someone is having fun with this weather, is summer here yet?

**are you sick of the cold?**

**are you surprised how much cold kids can tolerate in the name of fun?**

**what will you do first when the warm weather comes?**

the pretty and not-so-pretty sides of snow

We all have seen beautiful snow photographs, beautiful landscapes, trees that look like they're decorated for Christmas, each branch perfectly attended to. The pretty side of snow. You know what I mean right?

Yup, kind of like these, kind of. So, I woke up bright and early this morning, well maybe not bright but it was definitely early, before the sun counts as early. I noticed the bucket loads of snow we got in the middle of the night and decided to head outside to shovel while the sun came up. It was a beautiful site. Until it started snowing again while I was shovelling. I had to shovel everything TWICE, I hate that! Well, I was soaked to the bone by the time I was done and when I came inside and caught my reflection in the mirror, I started laughing outloud. Woooo-weeeee! The thing that happens to your hair under a hoodie while you're shovelling? That would be the not-so-pretty side of snow.

Today is a fantastic day to have a sore throat and a baby with a runny nose. There's snow, tons and tons of snow outside and I think I'm just going to stay inside today...at least until 3:25 when my "second shift" starts.

snow has it's good points too

So, I know that unless you are a skiier, snow is generally frowned upon due to all the shoveling, de-icing, crazy drivers, snow tires, the list goes on. But I have to say that I have never minded the snow, in fact, I love it. There is much to love about the fluffy white stuff, but my favorite thing is that strange peaceful feeling I have after the snow is done falling and everything is clean and white and just breath takingly beautiful. It makes me think of heaven, all that white. This is my view of the valley from my back porch. The light was terrible so it doesn't do it justice, the whole valley is just a big blanket of white. So great.Dead, brown trees that are naked from loosing their leaves are suddenly decorated and gorgeous. And the mountains, oh the mountains, brown and dry all summer long finally look like real mountains, winter is the only season that they take my breath away. I also love snow because we live in a desert people and we need the water! I love looking out the window in a snow storm and thinking, "now I have an excuse to just stay home in my flannel pjs and read". It's a pain to bundle Ethan up every time we have to go some where but that's ok, the cold is refreshing after a blazing hot summer. My favorite thing about Utah is the extreme weather we have in each season, it makes you look forward to the season to come. So, we finally got dumped on, we've gotten snow a few times so far, but this was finally the big one and it was awesome. The best part was the it dumped for most of the morning and then stopped for the rest of the day which left time for sledding and snowman building. Taylor injured his knee sledding, I think we're probably off to the doctor's tomorrow to have it looked at, but he was more upset about having to leave his friends on the snowy hill who would continue to have fun without him. I bought Ethan the wardrobe, boots, snow bib, etc. but he was too nervous yesterday to play out in it, I'm hoping he will "warm" up to the fluffy white stuff soon. Ahhhh, snow.