One thing I’ve learned is that Winter is a little easier to bear if you enjoy with your kids. Most kids love snow and don’t notice cold, so if you can bring yourself to participate a bit, it’s not so bad. For instance, since it was March break for Hayley last week, we took the kids to a large nature park (the one we like to go to in the summer) to go sledding. That was fun, though Breanna wasn’t impressed with the snow flying up into her face when she slid down. For instance, I had a great time sliding down the hill and chasing Hayley:

Breanna remained unimpressed and refused to get back on a sled:

(See the full Flickr set here.)

In fact, that Thursday was so much fun that on Friday, I took the two sleds, the two kids, and we went to our own little park around the corner. The snow has piled up so high at the fence due to numerous storms and many snow plows that we were able to climb up it and slide down into the park. We spent an hour and a half there, which was a blast, and also played on the park equipment which is always funnier in Winter – especially when one kid knocks another over backwards with the swing.

The thing is, though, no matter how much you might find yourself able to enjoy Winter when you act like a kid yourself, there are limits. When you get a snow storm on Wednesday and then get another one on Saturday, it’s really enough. Last night, it was snowing heavily and there were ice pellets pummeling the windows, and the wind was gusting up to 100 km/hr.

Today we walked over to George’s parents’ house to help them shovel out the driveway. There were no sidewalks at all, so we had to traipse along the streets, piling up into snowbanks if a car came along (luckily there wasn’t much traffic since most of it was trapped in snow anyway).

I think some people had given up completely are were just waiting for a Spring thaw, because where would you start?!

When we got there, I shoveled for about an hour or so (with a break in between to take the kids inside for hot chocolate), and George and his dad were at least an other hour or more on top of that. It’s getting to a point where people are running out of places to put the snow they’re trying to shovel.

I know a lot of people in Southern locations are curious about snow, think it’s beautiful, and would love to experience it for themselves. Please. Take it. I’ll ship it to you, as much as you want, I just want it all to stop.

Tomorrow Hayley goes back to school but already several school boards have preemptively shut down for tomorrow. Hayley’s school is not on the list YET but I’ll be checking tomorrow before I wake her up. The city is saying it could take at least a week for snow removal to be completed and there’s snow in the forecast later this week and on the weekend.

If anyone has some spare cash they don’t know what to do with, please feel free to send me and my family to Cancun for a week. Assuming the flights would be able to get us out of here, that is!

I love tongue in cheek humor.

I have a roast beef finishing up in the oven, potatoes boiling on the stove for mashed potatoes, and vegetables waiting to cook. I am so very hungry. It smells ridiculously good in here. Sometimes when I walk down the hall, I’ll pass an apartment door where someone inside is cooking something that smells delicious and I wish I could knock on the door and invite myself to supper – or at least ask for their recipe.

Tonight, maybe someone’s hovering near my front door and thinking, “damn that smells good”.

Too bad, I’m not sharing!

I say “Oh my God” a lot, and so does George. The kids, naturally, have picked up on that. Hayley isn’t so bad – I can tell her to stop and she will for awhile and she’s also old enough to know that it may be offensive to some people and that she should respect that and try very hard not to say it. Breanna, though, is only two so she doesn’t get it and she walks around saying “Oh my God, what’s that?!” and “Oh my God, look at this!” and the like.

Which is bad enough, but then today Hayley burped after drinking some juice and Breanna turned to her with great indignation and said, “Hayley! Jesus Christ! What do you say?!”

I told George that I’m not sure whether this means we need to start taking the kids to church or just make sure they never EVER set foot in one.

Happy Leap Year! You have an extra day of being alive this year, try to enjoy it in some small way. Now go leap!

(Profuse apologies to my downstairs neighbors who had to endure five attempts to get this shot.)

This morning it was -21C (-6F) and it was just the kind of weather where you wish you could bury yourself under the blankets and not come out until Spring.

When Hayley and I stepped out of our front door, a blast of cold air hit my face. My eyes watered and my nostrils froze shut in less than one minute. All I could think was how sick I am of Winter, how I hate being cold, and could Spring please move it along.

And Hayley looked around with a big smile and said, “It is such a beautiful day! Don’t you think so Mommy? It’s so nice out!”

Who is this child and are they sure she came from my uterus?

Then again, the charm of the day wore off as we were waiting in the school yard for the bell to ring. She turned to me wearily and said, “Mommy I’m tired of the cold and the snow.” When I told her it’s supposed to snow tonight (AGAIN), she heaved a huge and annoyed sigh and kicked some snow in disappointment.

Now that’s more like it.

Breanna was just nibbling on some food that she had leftover from an earlier snack. Since supper is in about 20 minutes (the smell of Butter Chicken is KILLING me I am so hungry ohmygod), I said that maybe she should put it down for now and have it later.

“Okay Mum. I’ll put it down right here.”

1. When did she get big enough to call me MUM for god’s sake?
2. When did she learn to speak in complete sentences complete with contractions?

I still remember when “Mama” and “Dada” were exciting, even when they were just sounds and didn’t mean anything in particular. My little baby is growing up.

Tonight I went for the easy meal and pulled out some french fries, frozen fish sticks (though in my defense, they’re really GOOD fish sticks, they get very crispy and tasty), and popped those in the oven while making some vegetables on the stove.

The meal went over well. Hayley ate all her fish, half her fries and about half her vegetables. Afterwards, she wanted half a bagel for dessert, which is odd but definitely doable. Breanna did quite well too, leaving only half a fish stick, about half the fries, and all the vegetables that weren’t peas (her favorite). For dessert, she wanted ice cream, and since ice cream counts as dairy (even her doctor said a little is fine because she doesn’t drink milk) I gave her a small bowl of it.

Then I went to take her plate away to start clearing the table while she ate dessert and holy hell, did she get mad. “No! Mine! My plate!” Fine then, ma’am, there’s your plate.

And she sat there, taking a bite of fish stick, a spoonful of chocolate ice cream, a bite of french fry, and spoonful of ice cream, on and on.

It was at that point that I came to the glorious conclusion that kids? They are GROSS.

Sometimes it’s the more laid-back weekends that are the most pleasant of all.

On Saturday, we started things off with one of my favorite weekend traditions when George hit the kitchen and made us bacon and eggs for breakfast. We don’t do it every single weekend, but it’s pretty frequent. Hayley had asked if we could go for a family walk but when I checked the weather forecast, I saw it was pretty darn cold on Saturday and that Sunday was promising to be warmer so we decided to put it off until then.

Later in the day someone came over to work on music for a couple of hours so I hung out with the girls in the living room doing some drawing; Hayley is getting really good at it and Breanna likes to name all her doodles.

Unfortunately, Breanna was a little cranky because she’s dealing with a cold that is driving her crazy, especially since we can’t seem to turn off the tap inside her nose. She required a great deal of cuddling right at the time I needed to start supper so she sat on my hip with her head on my shoulder while I made the rice and vegetables to go with the butter chicken we were having.

I was on my own for part of the evening but I didn’t mind since I spent a great deal of it poking around on Flickr and catching up on a few things I wanted to do. I ended up getting to bed entirely too late, sometime after 1 am. Whoops!

I ended up sleeping until 9 am, so that helped with the late bedtime. Then, George and the kids ended up in the living room watching something or other, and I decided to do something I hadn’t done in an eternity – I made my coffee and retreated to the bedroom to read. I’m about 200 pages into The Other Boleyn Girl and I am *loving* it when I’m not busy being irate at the way things were in that era. I managed to lie in bed, reading about 75 pages which was awesome. (In fact, as soon as I finish this entry, I think I must go read some more!)

After a quick lunch, we held true to our promise to Hayley and we bundled up for our family walk. It was a beautiful day and wasn’t very cold at all. We were out for almost an hour and a half, and Breanna walked the entire way except for coming up the stairs when we got back home. We walked around our neighborhood and found an enormous snow bank where the plows had been pushing snow out of a parking lot. Hayley had a blast climbing up and sliding back down. Even Breanna went a few times, though we had to carry her up and position her properly before letting her go. Hell, even I went down the hill once, despite a lack of snowpants and I got a cold, wet butt for my efforts (hi, pervy Google searching people!), but it was fun so I didn’t care. We’re hoping to go sledding in a couple of weeks, that should be a blast.

The rest of today was just a typical Sunday where we try to keep things low-key and get ready for starting back into the week. Never mind that it’s 9:45 pm and Hayley’s still awake despite needing to be up at 6:30 tomorrow morning (I’m not looking forward to waking her up for breakfast!). Breanna’s snoring exceptionally loudly over the monitor, poor little thing, but at least she’s sleeping. George is watching “The Simpsons”. And now I’m going to do the tiniest bit of Flickr-ing before returning to England in the 16th century and see what lies ahead for Henry and Mary and Anne.

I hope your weekend was as pleasant as ours!

Sherry: Okay, give me some space here in the kitchen please. I’m going to make supper now.
Breanna: SUPPER!
Sherry: Yes! I have to get the fish ready to put in the oven.
Breanna: (Touching the oven door) Ouch! OW! OW! OUCH! Hot! Ow!
Sherry: … The oven isn’t on yet.
Breanna: Oh.

*******

This morning when Hayley woke up, there was no drama involved in trying to get her out of bed. She still didn’t eat much breakfast, but she was cheerful because she was looking forward to doing all their Valentine activities in class and getting her cards from her classmates. She had also filled out three of the leftover cards to give to George, myself, and Breanna. (Breanna’s had a little beetle driving a car and it said, “you’re as cute as a bug!” – Breanna loved it so much that she spent the morning saying “cute a bug!” and if she misplaced the card she would panic and ask, “where my bug?!”) It was nice but the biggest smile came later, after she was gone to school. While placing something on her dresser I found the envelope she had been using to hide the cards from us.

On it, she had written, “To me famele” with a big heart.

I love phonetic writing.

*******

On this 14th of February, I hope that everyone is having a very happy VD.

No, that joke never gets old.