Ice Storm: After Church and Monday

(Note: My pictures uploaded all jumbled for some reason. Know that anything with grey sky is Sunday and anything with blue sky is Monday.)

After we finished with church, we headed outside to play in the...cold. 

The kids were pretty sad that we didn't get snow. This storm was massive, spreading its wintry havoc across about 30 states. Oaklyn and Ireland got snow up in Tennessee (which later turned to ice). My friend in Pennsylvania told me and Phoebe (on a Zoom call—she's one of the editors for the journal that I'm the editorial assistant for, so we were in a meeting this evening when Phoebe came in to sit on my lap) that she got a full foot of snow!

All we got was ice. Here's Alexander with a ghost leaf:

The kids were plucking them off our camellia bush. 

I wasn't really sure that sledding would work out too well, but it turns out that boogie boards function incredibly well on icy leaf litter.

Phoebe would have me note that sledding was so fun and fast and furious that it knocked off her mitten, as you can see in the picture below:

Phoebe was so impressed by this winter weather that she actually spoke quite a lot in my meeting. Usually she won't say anything if she comes in no matter what anyone asks her. Today, though, my advisor said, "Did you have fun with all the ice today, Miss Phoebe?"

And Phoebe perked right up.

"Yeth! I did!" she just about yelled (I'm not going to write her lisp in here, so just imagine that every ess is really /th/). "We went outside and the trampoline was covered in ice and we slipped all over the place! And our back deck is covered in ice and Benny made us ice skate! And the power went out so many times! It went out while I was sleeping and I woke up because there was a big noise and all the lights were out, even my fairy lights, so I cried and made Alexei wake up! And I ate and icicle and I have mittens that look like cat paws! And we went down the big hill and..."

She had oodles to tell them.

Anyway, it was Benjamin's idea to head down the hill. I was skeptical... I thought the ice would only hold up for a pass or two, but the kids were at it for quite a while. Here's a video of several kids going down, including Benjamin crashing right into poor Alexander:

But here's Alexander going down like a champion (you can tell his picture was taken before I informed the kids that it was literally freezing outside and they should have more layers on than a light jacket):

The board he chose to use has some woven plastic fabric on the bottom. It's like...whatever those big blue IKEA bags are made out of (woven polypropylene, the website tells me). It works, but it isn't as good as the smooth surface of the more expensive boogie boards.

The end of this video shows what Alex's board sounded like when the rain was hitting it...it was weird:

Here's Miriam taking a turn:

And even I got on the board, though I ran over a weird metal mesh thing that was in the leaves...which kind of slowed my roll. But I was glad that I was the one to find that metal mesh, rather than having one of the kids roll over it!

Finally, here's Phoebe going down the hill by herself (Miriam was filming and wasn't quite sure what to do when Phoebe inevitably started heading straight for the fence...but it was fine):

We went for a little walk up the hill to see what we could see. Zoë found a little branch that had snapped off a tree. It was still covered in ice and was considerably heavier than we anticipated it would be when we tried to pick it up (ice is heavy).

The kids were quite taken in by these sweet gum balls encased in ice:

As you can see, Sunday was rather drizzly and that drizzle turned into a veritable downpour on us. We started getting wet, despite all our winter layers, so we headed home. Phoebe was wearing her rain boots and wasn't thrilled with the idea of going home when there were puddles to be stomped in:

So I gave her a few minutes to stomp in puddles while I stood outside in the freezing rain with her...like a good mom...before I dragged her inside kicking and screaming to get warm and dry...like a good mom.

My kids literally have no sense about cold, wet weather. Like, Alexander stuck his gloved hands into the water to "feel how much water was in the gutter."

I was like, "Cool. Now you have wet gloves."

And then today the kids went on the trampoline while they were waiting for me to put my Invisalign trays in after lunch so we could go for a walk. When I called them to leave for our walk they all trudged into the front yard completely soaked from jumping on the icy-wet trampoline. 

"You can't go for a walk like that!" I said. 

"Why not?" they asked. 

"It's twenty degrees out!" I said (that's -6°C). "You'll freeze the minute the wind hits you!"

I made them all go in and change their pants into dry ones for the walk. And still I didn't notice that Phoebe's mittens were soaked through until she handed them to me because they weren't helping her hands stay warm anymore. I was like, "Yeah. These wouldn't. They're soaking wet!"

And then she kept picking up ice with her cold little hands!

At one point I reminded her that she needed to keep her hands in her pockets so they could stay warm and she goes, "Oh, yeah..." and stuffs the ice that's she's holding into her pocket along with her hand. 

I was like, "No! You can't put ice in your pockets!"

So, anyway...we took a very short walk...and found all sorts of interesting ice and icicles. 

They were a little upset with me because I told them they couldn't eat this particular ice...which they had pried off the garbage can...

Here's a sheet of ice that Zoë pulled off a fallen stick:

And the way the ice was melting off these leaves was quite interesting—it was a charming mixture of ghost leaves and real leaves.

It wasn't quite the snow day we were hoping for (last year's was epic...for Georgia), and as you can see the roads are pretty much clear. I didn't have classes today (I don't usually have classes on Monday anyway) and tomorrow classes are cancelled until the afternoon. 

Aside from that...and church being cancelled and swim practice being cancelled this afternoon and the 1+ hour power outage in the wee hours of the morning and scared Phoebe out of her wits...it's pretty much been business as usual.