Wordless Wednesday: Snow Edition

"I can't put my arms down!"

Eating snow? Me?
Hmmmm....
OK. What now?
I'm Done!!

And the snow is falling!

We had our first substantial snow of the season yesterday. All told it was maybe a couple of inches, not much, but enough to coat the pine trees and make everything look quiet and serene. I should have gotten a picture, because words can rarely do justice to the beauty. The snow didn't stick around for too long, it started raining last night and most of the snow is gone now. I think the snow in the trees lasted for an hour or two before it was blown off. My son was so tickled by the snow. I can't wait until it really snows and we can go outside and play. I'm sure that he will really enjoy it so much more this year. It will be the first year we can take the baby out to play in the snow too! It will be a thrill for about a week or so ;) and then I will be ready for winter to be over.

I remember when we were kids, we would go out everyday all winter long and play in the snow for hours. It seemed as though we never got too cold. We'd spend hours making extravagant snow forts and tunnels and families of snowpeople and our yard would be decorated with snow angels of all sizes.

But now as an adult, its always too cold for me! :) Does something happen inside your body that makes you feel the cold more when you get older? Because our kids are the same as we were when we were kids - they can't stay outside in the snow long enough. It probably has something to do with children having a higher metabolism or something.

For now I'm just going to stock up on hot chocolate and wait for the first big snow of the season, which is probably just around the corner.

Ahhh. Back from Travelling

Ever travelled over 400 miles with an infant, toddler, 10 year old, husband and wiener dog? It's not the most desirable thing in the world.

One hour into our trip 2 things happened. The baby pooped all the way through her clothes. Luckily I was nursing her at the time, so no spoilage on the car seat. And thankfully I had packed an extra outfit in the easily reachable diaper bag (but only one, so I was really hoping it wouldn't happen again!)

The second thing was that it started snowing big time. We knew that they were predicting snow, so we were prepared to drive the distance in snow. We just thought that most of the snow would be somewhere in the middle of our trip. It lasted from the first hour until the last hour. So we had 2 hours (of an 8 hour drive) of snow free driving.

Very shortly after our first stop (an hour into the trip) the baby had a meltdown and I ended up having to climb in back and sit between the two car seats for the rest of the trip. That was so not comfortable. But every time things seemed to be under control and I would think about going back up front, things would start to get hairy again.

I don't know which is worse. Dueling meltdowns or when they take turns having meltdowns...

At least on the drive home I was able to sit in the front seat for the first three hours! :) But it always seems to take much longer to get home...more breakdowns (of course you don't want to say "breakdowns" or "blowouts" when talking about a road trip... I made the mistake of telling my mother that we had a couple of "blowouts" on our drive last time - of course she assumed I meant tires, when really I was talking about poop-throughs!).

I don't know if it's better to stop more or less often. They definately need a break from the car seat every now and then, but then they never want to get back in and you think it would have been better not to stop... we try to only stop a couple of times...

Now comes the part I really hate: coming home to a house in need of a cleaning :( the kitchen fairies did not come while we were gone... here it is 2 days later and I still haven't done the dishes or laundry, or unpacked... and it smells like something crawled into the fridge while we were gone and died. It probably doesn't help that I have some serious leftovers in there! Ugh. I guess that's what I'll start with, as I just don't want to open the fridge again...
More about the travels later...