In October, Jessica (who teaches in the primary, although she wasn't Phoebe's teacher) gave her class and Phoebe a pumpkin. Jessica always brings an extra [whatever] for Phoebe (she's very sweet like that, even if she judges my attachment to my cheap tupperware).
Phoebe has insisted on being tucked into bed with that pumpkin ever since and every night we'd give the pumpkin a little squeeze to see if it was...starting to...you know...turn. Finally the day arrived that its once-rigid exterior developed a bit of give to it, if you will. We knew something had to be done sooner rather than later.
So we made a big deal about picking out the perfect orange on Sunday morning so that Mommy could make her a stuffed pumpkin to replace her real pumpkin (which we invited her to toss into the garden to see if any baby pumpkins will come of it).
Here she is picking out her orange:
When Rachel and I were driving home from campus today, I noticed a plume of smoke rising around the corner.
"Something's happening up there," I said. "You need to move over."
Fortunately, we were fairly alone on the road at that moment (changing lanes can be tricky). We rounded the corner and immediately saw the cause of the smoke. A large vehicle—what seemed to be a moving van—was engulfed in flames.
I feel like I'm running out of time to devote to blogging at the moment. I still have a ton of reading to do for my classes next week. So...here are some videos of everyone sledding...I still have more pictures to get off of people's phones (of, like, me, for example). We'll see if that happens. Oh! One more good story is that...Andrew lost his phone!
It fell out of his pocket while he was sledding and we hunted around for a few moments before we realized that we could just do "find my phone" for him. But when I tried to do that with my phone it wouldn't let me ping him for some reason. So instead I just called him and hoped for the best. Miriam located it, sunk deep into a pile of leaves at the bottom of the hill (thank goodness).
When we got back up to the top of the hill we met a little neighbour boy hunting around for his lost glasses. Those are much harder to find than a phone because (a) you can't just call it and have it ring and (b) you're half blind while looking for it. But we managed to find those as well (thank goodness).
Sledding can be dangerous!
But it's so fun! I told the kids about ice blocking and suggested they do it for a church activity (I did it a couple of times when I was a kid). They could even put down a slip and slide or something so they don't ruin the grass... Our youth group used to do sledding activities when I was growing up, too...but those are harder to plan for and carry out down in the south. Ice blocking is a more...dependable...activity.
Anyway...we're here for sledding videos! Here they are:
There were a couple of times last night when the power turned off with such finality that I would think—in the dark—"This is it. We've got to..."
And then the power would come back on before I even had a chance to think through precisely what we needed to do to make it through the night without power. Laugh all you want—it's not that cold and this wasn't that much snow, but our houses simply aren't built or insulated the same way they are in the north. Our pipes are more likely to freeze and burst. Our upstairs can be incredibly drafty. And that's just how it is.
But, we were some of the lucky ones. Our power stayed on (for the most part, though it definitely shut off at least a dozen times over the course of the evening).
Anyway, I'm ready for Part One of our Snow Day adventure. The kids are tucked away watching Frozen (Phoebe's first time, in her memory) after coming in from a disappointing second day of snow...it's all melted and refrozen...and just not the same as the fresh snow. So, here are some memories from yesterday...
Phoebe was obsessed with eating the snow. She did not understand how to work her hands in her mittens—although she can recite "Thumb in the thumb place, fingers altogether," and does so while we're putting on her mittens, she tends to stick her thumb in with the rest of her fingers and then her hands are useless in her mittens. So instead she just throws herself into the snow face-first to take in all the snowy goodness.
I suppose I should really start with the morning when I woke up at 8:00 to the sounds of someone clomping down the driveway. I glanced out the window and noticed that Mother Nature had not let us down—it had, in fact, snowed! And someone was probably coming to see if the kids could play.
So I hopped out of bed, threw on my housecoat, and rushed to wake the kids.
But, as it turns out, they woke up at the crack of dawn to head outside and it was them clomping up to their own house to get something.
As Zoë put it, "My alarm went off at 7:35. We were outside by 7:40."
The rest of us were outside by 8:30, probably. And we enjoyed a lovely morning sledding with the neighbours, and building snowmen, chatting and chattering.
The kids went back out for round two in the afternoon, but I stayed inside to nap study (and, boy, was it a good study nap session). By this time it was sleeting more than snowing so most of the neighbours chose to stay inside, but one little neighbour and his mom came outside to play with the kids and I'm so glad they did because the mom had been too shy to try sledding when all the neighbours were out...but when it was just my kids out...she decided to give it a go (or three or four go's).
The kids wanted to head back out for a walk after dinner. By this time we were mostly getting plain ol' frozen rain. See how all those drips are changing to icicles? Everything is covered in ice out there.
Just a friendly reminder to my southern friends that if you don't have snow gear, you can make your own with plastic bags! It's easier done with little kids (see here, here, here, and here). But I'll probably be fashioning myself a nice pair of plastic pants tomorrow so I can go out with the kids.
Here's skeptical Benjamin rocking a pair of snow pants in 2014:
