Snow Week

Have you missed me?

This week, as you may have noticed ALL over facebook, and perhaps in your own backyard, the ATL got a whole lot of snow. We didn't exactly measure it in our yard. . .but I heard people saying 6 inches.

Amazing in this picture you can't even tell where the driveway starts & stops. The roads were covered, although you can see that some people did try to get out on Monday. The truck parked on the street by our house is a new acquisition (like. . the Friday before it snowed).

Day 1 of snow was spent exploring our wintry wonderland & trying to help Kate do some sledding, which she did accomplish! We tried various things, including a large patio table top w/ legs detached, a thingamajig that rolls under a car when you are working on it, and I did even take a lid off of a trashcan to work on an adult sled. Unfortunately, our trashcan lid wasn't smooth. :-( However, we finally struck gold with the kiddie pool. The key was making a path down the hill with the kiddie pool, and each run made the track more compact and a bit better. By the end of the afternoon, I was able to sled down myself, unfortunately caught neither on still or moving picture. There was one observer, a neighbor kid walking past and for once in my life I was glad that I mostly look like a kid! Especially since I was outside all by myself by that point. I got one great run, and a few runs that had multiple slow spots, some arm pushing, with a few moments of "I'm flying" mixed in. It was amazing that I wanted to trudge back up the hill to try again for as few jollies as I got out of it, but it felt a bit addictive. As you can see by the second pic, a crust of icy snow was beginning to form, easy to pick up in largish chunks, too. Not exactly snowball weather, but you do what you have to do!

Day 2 Kate made it out to do more sledding and snow monster making. Since the first day, Kate had wanted to make a Snowman, a snow monster, and a snow princess. I think they settled on the snowmonster because the snow wasn't rolling very well and the snowperson had a monsterish shape, I guess. My favorite is the attention to detail. They used untraditional items like sweet gum balls for eyes because they, too, are monsterish. Also, Kate insisted that the monster's face be a "mad" face. 

The entire time, Rachel has been unwell, and by Day 3, Kate had joined her. The last pic is the two of them convalescing on the couch for 15 seconds. It's been so cute to see them together these last few days, as though Rachel is all of a sudden growing up some more. Today Kate was teaching her the lyrics to Do Re Mi (Sound of Music) & the Cuckoo song. Super cute!

-"Say 'do'"

-"Do" 

-"Say 're'"

-"Re"

-"Mom, Rachel sang Do, Re, Mi. I taught her."

Nevermind that she was just parroting.

And, the cream on this fun week has been that my sister was snowed in a long with us!