For everyone who lives in warmer, moderate climates – lucky you!

We are in the deep freeze here, and for our family who live farther east, we sympathize with you in the coming days. The girls and I were supposed to go back to school this morning. But with -40 degree wind chills, schools are canceled both today and tomorrow. It was a smart move for all schools. These kind of temperatures mean that exposed skin can frostbite in 5 minutes or less. Even in a district like the girls’, where all kids can take a bus, kids still have to wait outside for that bus for longer than 5 minutes.

So we hang around the house, listening to the wind howl and watching the ice build up on windows. We also have an electrical switch that sits right by the patio doors. It controls the light over the kitchen table and the outside porch light. Because of that direct connection to the outside, that switch cover is icing up. The screw heads are covered in ice and there is even a frosty coat to the whole plate cover! When it thaws, we really need to insulate that better! I will post a picture soon of that.

We’ll just be keeping warm and hanging around the house, enjoying our extra couple of days for winter break and contemplating when each school will make up these days.

Stay warm everyone!

So, it is 2014. Thought I should finish with a few last photos from 2013.

Christmas is a multi-day, multi-home event for us. We start on Christmas Eve with Gramma and Grampa. Gizmo is also an important “host”, although he seems to enjoy spending his time right in front of a heat vent.

According to Kevin, the star attraction is the prime rib roast.

The rest of dinner is tasty too! And no – that ketchup did not go anywhere near the roast! It was there for the kids who had dino nuggets for dinner.

We opened presents, had dessert, and headed home. Christmas part 2 was just us. The girls started by opening stockings, then had some cinnamon rolls. We opened the rest of the presents after showers.

One present from Gramma took some assembly. Power tools were needed.

Christmas part 3 was later in the afternoon. All of Kevin’s family and Dad came over for more food and chaos.

More presents exchanged too! Christmas part 4 was a special trip. We took the girls’ cousins to Key Lime Cove water park for a full day/night the day after Christmas! We had some really tired girls by the time we got home.

Things have settled down a little now. We were invited to a friend’s house for New Year’s Eve, where the girls stayed up until after 11PM! That’s normal for so many kids their ages, but was super late for them. The big “surprise” for the New Year was a little snow. An actual full out, 12 inches plus of snow. We shoveled and used the thrower a couple of times. It just kept coming, and then the magical lake effect kicked in this morning to add another inch or two. Like it matters at that point! The sad part is that it is REALLY cold, with single digit wind chills. So the girls tried to play outside in the snow, but just got too cold too fast. The high temp this coming Monday is supposed to be -8 ish. HIGH TEMP!! It will be interesting to see how that affects the first day back to school.

A picture of our backyard, with the snow piled up so nice on the walls.

Don’t you all wish you could be here to help shovel?