buried

This one is for all our southern friends.


Gasp aloud with me!


That's taken from our back mudroom door.  Oh, my stars!

And through our screen porch this is the lovely snowscape {she writes sarcastically}.  

It was beautiful to behold in December.  But now...ugh.  

Our adirondack chairs around the firepit.  Looks inviting, doesn't it!  

Wow do we have a lot of snow this year.  And yesterday another eight to ten fell.  JUST after a melt last week, thankfully.  All the ice on the roof had a chance to melt before another layer of snow was added.  And the piles lining the streets did decrease significantly.  I could finally see oncoming cars as I pulled out...yes, it's been that crazy this year!  The snow is piled so high. 

Here is proof!  That's our neighbor's dog this morning.  See that snow pile behind him?  That's just an average sized one right now.

And in case it doesn't seem high enough...

Hello!  There is Ann, with the snowdrift over her head!  

Thankful for Pa Ingalls, I mean Jim, this morning!  He must have blown snow and shoveled for an hour.  What a job!

Needless to say, we did enjoy Sunday spent in front of our fireplace the ENTIRE day.  The real one with wood in the living room, not just the gas one in the family room!  What a fun time.

{photo here}

Now today we have the day off...because of President's Day holiday not because of the snow.  It's Minnesota people!  :)

The kids are clamoring for Cooper's pannekoeken's for breakfast, but the teenager is still sleeping.  Soundly.  

All the snow drama behind us, we set our sights on the snowhill across the street.  Sledding is in store for the afternoon!  And hot cocoa.  Yum!

Here's what 16 inches looks like at our house!

Can you see the minivan behind the sweet girls huddled on the radiator in the kitchen?  They were snuggled up keeping warm, after I told them stories of my girlhood.

My Grandma had a long warm radiator in her dining room that sat right in front of a large picture window.  I loooooved to sit there, all warm and snug, and alternately watch the goings-on outside, and peek at the happenings in the kitchen through her swinging door.

Ah, the old days.

Now made new again in my little corner of the world!  These two lovelies kept returning to their sweet spot on the radiator, and monitoring the ever-increasing snowfall outside.

We survived the blizzard in high style, with Christmas cookie making a-plenty,  a freezer full of delightfully yummy goods from the cooking group I belong to, games galore and one another.  

Jim was masterful on three different occasions with the snowblower, while I worked the shovel and called it my workout.  Emma Kate stood in her snowsuit, with a scarf wrapped around her entire face so only her eyes peeked out.  While her brothers and sister braved the yard for playtime, EK was fine just watching from the sidewalk with me, and gamely glad to return to the warmth of the house.  Inside, watching it all happen outside.

It was quite a snowfall!  Years, really, since we experienced one this big.  The snowdrifts remind me of how big they were when I was a child.  I remember walking home from school along the ridgetops of the drifts, feeling adventurous and mighty all at once.  It is a bit like driving through tunnels, at least at the corners where it is hard to see around them.

We had a great weekend at home together a.l.l. weekend long.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Boot hockey: EK goes true blue!

If you live in Minnesota, and have even a shred of "Minnesotaness" (notice that didn't read: Minnesota-nice) in you, boot hockey is a prerequisite.

Really, skating is essential.  However, one needs a nice smooth rink for that.  And while our neighborhood, as most here in the north do, boasts a lovely ice rink, the ice is still being laid.  In fact, the zamboni is parked in it's nice little winter house awaiting the day it grooms and smooths to the joy of all the neighborhood.

We knew the rink was up, we just weren't sure what form of running it was in.  So we prepared for it all...or I should say Jim prepared the kids for it all.  Preparing involves digging around in all the blue bins housing skates, pads, helmets and the like in the basement.  Not for the faint of heart, that job.  And surely a blue job at that.  Pink only ventures down for that experience under duress.

We had it all, including boots, when we ventured a block over for some skating fun.  Apparently all we needed were the boots.  Perhaps the grass still sticking up in the far corner of the rink was a slight indication it wasn't quite time.

Here's boot hockey, with 3 boys and two ice-angel making girls:

Laying on the ice to make "ice angels" is really super fun...seriously.  Just look at EKs face!  She loves it.  :)

Emma Kate is doing so well.  Today as I dropped off the littles for school, after Baba and the older boys departed at 6:45, she chimed up from the back, "Anna.  Kiss.  You come back".

Anna does come back.  We all come back.  Always.  Because that's what family does.  We always come back.

Our thermostat: 64. Actual temperature in house: 79, and in other news...

Now that makes for one weird wake-up when one is snuggled under a mound of down in order to combat winter's chilly breath.

I felt like I was breathing in desert air: hot and dry.  No wonder Anna was up roaming the halls!  Who can sleep in that?

Service Plus instructed us to turn off the furnace, and if we couldn't figure out how to do that, it would be treated as an emergency.  It is a good thing Jim was still home, since I have no idea how to figure out that furnace with gas and water lines twisting and turning their way in and out of it.  Puzzles aren't my strong suit, and this furnace would have left me confounded.

Shorts in almost-December?  Hey, I've never baked Christmas cookies in such attire!  And the first batch are on the schedule for today.  It is amazing what one can get done over Thanksgiving Break when the hosting is at another house!   This year, all we do is show up with pies in hand.  How easy is that?  But really, who wants to even turn on the oven when it is so hot in the house.  Akin to simmering a pot roast in August.  Yuck!

Emma Kate, hailing from the tropical shores of China, should feel right at home.  Maybe a bit of a grace note for her, in lieu of falling temperatures outside the likes of which she has never seen.  The ice storm we had on Saturday night left one confused girl on Sunday morning when the world was a skating rink.  Two tumbling siblings and one other intentionally flinging himself down the driveway with three large teenage-bodied friends who had slept over equals one highly skeptical new citizen in Emma Kate.  She was very sure she'd landed on planet strange.  Considering the body gyrations the teen set were making as they skated hither and yon over the ice-covered streets, she was spot on!

But I digress.  The furnace, you ask?  Maybe you didn't; but the furnace.  Well, let us first state that it isn't "fixed" per se, but it is suddenly operational.  Sort of like when you take your child with the 104.5 degree temperature and profuse vomiting to the pediatrician, only to have said child appear perky and robust with no temperature in sight and a hearty appetite to boost.  Go figure.  We're now on the "stat" call list...maybe that's a bit like the button you can push at the hospital if something is seriously wrong.  Code blue?  Code Blue is nothing to joke about, and I'm hoping it is not the future of our furnace calls either.

Tomorrow is a big day.  (This is a segue, in case you are having brain ricochet from my lightning-like transitions.)  Emma Kate has an appointment at the U of MN International Adoption Clinic.  Jim took the day off so that he can also come.  He's such an incredible daddy to his kids.  We will hopefully receive a good opinion on our options for surgery and be able to quickly make decisions and schedule procedures (or re-schedule, as the case may be).  I'll keep you posted.

And finally, last but not least, here's a peek of what our little snow bunny looked like on her first snow outing!  It might be hot inside, but baby it is cold outside...

Baba is an amazing pusher!

Joy at the top of the hill (and a deep breath for Baba!)

Snow girl!  Minnesota loves you, Emma Kate!