Icy Death 2010, part 2

Peter arrived home this morning (DC to Charlotte to Philly to Detroit to Minneapols to Memphis--and if he hadn't convinced them to route him back north on another airline, he'd STILL be in Charlotte!) and promptly whisked the girls out for another round of sledding. Most of our accumulation is ice--looks like snow but solid as a rock, thanks to the massive quantities of sleet that came down in the late afternoon and evening. This made some traditional snow playing difficult or impossible, but the sledding was good! A few pictures from our neighborhood:

Since We've No Place To Go, Let It Snow!

As I post to this blog, we are the midst of Icy Death 2010/Arctic Assault/State of Emergency, etc. (When you live in a place that is not used to much winter weather, any prediction of snow or ice is met with fear and anxiety by all, fueled nicely by the weather personalities on our local news stations. To their credit, this one really is pretty nasty, with sleet and snow still coming down in torrential amounts, going on the 8th hour or so.) My clinic closed in advance, so that we could see some of today's patients yesterday. Schools, of course, are closed (they ain't afraid to close some stuff around here at the first whisper of the word "snow"). Everything is canceled. So, here we are, confined to the house. Peter is in, well, I guess right now he's in Philadelphia in the midst of a ridiculous airline fiasco. Looks like he'll get home tomorrow morning. The girls are about to kill each other, if I don't get to 'em first. But on the bright side, we baked chocolate chip cookies, made homemade hot chocolate, painted pictures, played board games, watched one epsisode of Dora, played on webkinz.com, listened to some Joni Mitchell & some Dave Matthews and ate garlic cheese grits. We went outside to have a snowball fight and went sledding on a hill nearby (going just fine until Molly got snow down her pants, and that was that!). The forecast includes continued frozen precip of various types until about 6 am tomorrow. So, since we've no place to go, let it snow!

"Mommy, I ready to pway inna snow! Got my boots and a pretty dress!"

Maybe this is a little more appropriate for the snow!

Snow buddies

My little competitor, ready to pummel someone with a snowball

Molly is ready to "Get Mommy!"

First run: Molly

And Molly again

Rebecca trudges back up, fully dressed with a smile

Rebecca, the fearless one

Ice, ice baby

Hello, Mr. Sunshine!

After that frigid cold, we had a couple of lovely days, one of them falling on the King holiday, when Mom and Dad weren't at work and the kiddos were out of school. It didn't take much convincing to get outta the house & into the sun! We went to the Botanic Garden to enjoy their children's area called My Big Backyard and then closed out the day at the zoo.

Chasing the Cold Away

We had some days in January that were just bitter cold. Like most of the country, we were frozen to the core, huddling inside by the fire, trying to avoid going outside lest our nose hairs would freeze. There were points when our temps--with windchill--were 15 below zero, awfully cold for our neck o' the woods. One afternoon, we pulled out Molly's pedicure kit, a gift from Santa, and tried to will away the cold with some TLC on our toesies.

Rebecca

Molly

Amelia