My adorable donut date

Snow days are exhausting, even for caped superheroes

Snow day shenanigans

We got a little bit of the storm that everyone else is getting, enough that the school called first thing to announce they were starting off with a 2 hour delay. 

Sure enough, they called back to say that school was now closed. So after sleeping in a bit, we girls suited up and did battle with the snow after a bit of goofing around:

We did the whole driveway and she headed over to do the neighbor's next. I decided I didn't want her to do anywhere near the road, so I headed over after her, began at the street so I could work my way towards her, and heard Carrie talking to the neighbor at her front door. What I didn't hear was her bartering. Carrie claimed to be a lawn care service provider and would work for banana bread (which we already have in our fridge, but never mind) but the neighbor laughed and said, "sorry, don't have time to cook today. Here's $5. Just do the sidewalk, don't worry about the driveway."

!!!!!!!! 

Oh well. 

So we got two driveways done in an hour. It's still coming down and is supposed to continue until around 4 this afternoon. 

*gasp* It's Anti-Mom Coffee!

The Woods Are Lovely...

I'm not the only one who is behind

I've talked before about how PaPa would tell Lisa and I to get busy with our sidewalk chalk whenever he felt we needed rain. Within three days it would wash our sidestreet- to-garage chalk art and he'd be thankful.

This time it took four days. Must be because I didn't have my Lisa to help!

The boys and I did these last Saturday, and it's rained almost all day today:

You can tell how windy it was as the drawings are all half-dusted off. And now we have a fresh clean slate for our next warm day. Hopefully that arrives before May...

Mid-late month...

I forgot all about taking my mid-month picture of the boys at the bus stop, so I apologize for being a little late. These were taken Monday morning, about a week behind.

As you can see, cute urchins and no snow. Frosty, but no snow. Yippie!

Then, because they are boys, they raced to the end of the driveway and someone got plowed into and knocked over and I'll let the pictures be worth a thousand words:

But everyone made it onto the bus and nobody killed anyone else and the sun was shining and I had coffee. Not a terrible Monday, all things considered.

This one's called "Eight AM February Light on Oak in Ohio", haha!

A Taste of Spring

Some of you also experienced unseasonably warm weather last weekend and were able to enjoy the great outdoors as we did. The kids ran around outside (blowing the stink off) most of the day while Triskal and I putzed around, tidying and supervising. Dada got to go to krav and grappling alone as we'd squeezed all our required classes in early in the week. 

Carrie had built a lean-to our first fall in this house. It was still standing, so of course she decided to take it down and use the supplies to build a bigger one. She commandeered helpers. 

Apparently they're done with one side of it and the other side needs work. I haven't checked it yet to see if it's withstood the wind and rain we've had today. It kept them pretty busy for a good while, but it is hard to find good help these days, and sure enough there were soon light saber battles:

And breaks for love:

Then we had a campfire to whittle down our ever-expanding woodpile. Dada and I used the warmth and light to prune some growth off the apple trees and he attempted to clean up a gooseberry bush. The moon came out and we had a lovely fire, though sadly there were only three large marshmallows left in the bag, so no s'mores.

Random and Rusty

Apparently I've been away from this for so long that I didn't even realize I'd posted once in February already. I uploaded pictures into a new folder for February, not paying attention to the fact that I had one already. 

So let's clear out the cobwebs and get back in the game.

My mother always swears that March is the longest month of the year. I just as firmly maintain that February is the longest month. Granted, usually we have way more ice/snow/yuck than we've had this year, and I am totally fine that we haven't had it. 

Still, this month, for only having 28-29 days, takes foreeeeeeeeeeeever to me. The lengthening hours of light are most welcome and lack of yuck makes a huge difference, but as I am solar powered I just want to sleep! Why, why, WHY can we not just sleep February away!?

Anyway.

One morning I had breakfast with someone famous:

It may look to you like he's failing at using the Force to clean up the pulverized bits of Chex, but don't be fooled. He is merely channeling my inner incredulousness (is that even a word? It is now.) that these children who shall remain nameless didn't clean up after themselves. Again.

Care Bear has gotten into a cookbook fit, though not all of her concoctions are edible. This one, in fact, involved borax and food coloring and more mess:

As usual, she is selectively deaf like her Uncle Hinrew, and neglected to put it back into it's Baggie after playing with it. It spread dangerously close to oozing off the marble and onto the rest of the bar. She was delighted.

The days have consisted of school and karate and homework and snacks and kid laundry and all the usual. We did get an absolutely gorgeous weekend to play outside, but that's another post entirely. 

We've had visits from both PaPa (a brief one) and Grandmama (a longer one) though I didn't get any pictures of them! Sorry. =/  It's been nice to have roads clear enough that they could make the trip out. I wonder what the weather will be doing for Spring Break at the end of March...

After the storm

It's been a very odd winter in regards to weather. Last night we had thunder, lightning, downpours, and a terrific amount of wind. On the way home from karate, the kids and I watched three separate, amazingly vertical zishes of lightning hit the ground at the same time a good way in front of us. I've never seen such synchronized stabbing- it looked like three columns of current. Definitely left afterburn on my retinas. Today it is 56 and tomorrow it's to be 33. This is what we discovered when we woke up:

I'd say that explains all the banging around that Dada and I heard last night just before midnight, haha. 

Below is what I believe to be the widowmaker that has been stuck in one of the trees bordering the deck since before we moved in. I saw it when we viewed the house the first time. I'm glad it's finally down and that there's nobody under it.

Cleanup on aisle 9, please, cleanup on aisle 9...