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| Winter Wonderland view from my kitchen window. |
Yep, our seasons are so hard to jive with the calendar and with the holidays. We'll be wearing winter coats on July 4th in a few days, for instance. This whole Southern hemisphere gig is hard to get used to sometimes. But whatever. Snow is always fun. And school was closed (for two days). So we made the most of it and had a blast. (Until the kids drove me batty by noon on the first day. But we won't dwell on that.)
The forecast had been for snow and it had been pouring down rain all night (they don't insulate attics here (well/at all) and the roof is made of aluminum with some fancy coating to make it look like stone so we can hear rain pretty clearly from our bedroom on the top floor.) Erik and I woke up at O-dark-thirty for him to get ready for work and it was still raining. But when he went out to the Landy to go to work, he came back in to say it was snowing. I was pretty thrilled. I haven't been in a snow storm since Caty was little and we had a blizzard at Mom and Dad's house. There is something just magical about falling snow. Sigh. I was sure it wouldn't last and wouldn't stick so I went outside and snapped a couple photos in the dark for the record.
Erik went to work and later Caty's school posted a notice on their web page that school was cancelled due to snow. Then we went out in the snow after the kids had breakfast. It was really coming down and it was quite a wet snow so Maggie took shelter under the feijoa tree and rescued her Dora ball from the snow.
Benjamin loved it. He was thrilled with the snow and you could see in his eyes (when he looked up from what he was doing) that he was trying to figure this stuff out. He did some "experiments" to see if he could catch it, make a ball, make tracks, throw it up and see if it came down the same way again, etc...
All this time, I was thinking that the snow would stop and it would melt soon. (I guess I lived in Colorado too long.)
After a while of shenanigans in the snow the kids got cold and we went inside. We decided that since our bird feeder had recently run out, we should improvise some food for the poor birds who probably couldn't find anything under all that snow. We made some food with peanut butter, lard, leftover dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds and pine nuts (we have gourmand birds now), oats and raisins. We watched as one bird found the globule of food on the front lawn and signaled to his buddies. They proceeded to have a feeding frenzy until a couple big black birds showed up and ran them off to the trees. But the little guys were back after the big birds were full and left. They didn't leave anything behind that evening. I bet all of them were drunk with lard-happiness!
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| Watching the birds eat their food. We have a great big picture window on the landing. |
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| Neighborhood birds chowing down. These are the small ones. |
Around lunchtime Erik was finally convinced to blow off work and come home (again, because I thought it was all about to melt!) It was still coming down hard but I was sure it would stop any second and the sun would come out.
We all bundled up again (for the 3rd time that morning) and went out to play with Dad! By this time, Ben was getting really good at snow balls and instead of throwing them, he would walk over and grind them into you!
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| And angry bird with a snow ball. |
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| Daddy's girl. |
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| Catherine has a pretty good arm and hammered us with snow balls until we called an end to it. |
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| A pic with Mom. |
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| Family. |
Catherine showed Ben how to do a snow angel but he was too quick and I didn't get his picture. He just won't hold still for long.
Nice snow angel!
I think this was one of the last snowballs thrown. I can't believe I got a pic of it. Caty missed but only because Erik took evasive action.
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| Heartrendingly handsome! |
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| A tree in front of our house. |
During a lul in the storm (which I thought was the end of it), I ran around and took some photos of the frozen scenery.
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| Our gate. |
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| Erik's Landy. |
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| View to the South. |
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| Never thought I'd have a picket fence |
Through the day the snow kept coming. I think it finally died out after dark. But it never warmed up and was days before it all melted. It was fun but I discovered that they don't have snow plows!! And no one seems to own or know how to use a snow shovel! Everyone (homeowners, shop owners, and corporate premises alike) waited until day two or three to get out the shovels and when they did, the shovels were those flat head shovels - not good for snow, not at all. But since by then, most people were faced with chipping away the ice that had formed from the slush that froze over night, I guess it was the right tool for the job. Here is certainly an instance where 'a stitch in time saves nine', 'one year's seeds, seven year's weeds', 'procrastination is the thief of time' and 'the early bird catches the worm', what?! (Maybe I've been reading too many Victorian novels...)
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| Ben and Caty made snow men on the first day. |
School was closed on the second day because the heating wouldn't turn on. And then opened at 10 am on the third day (and this was after a three day weekend for the Queen's Birthday). So Caty was only at school for a day and a half that week. She was pretty thrilled at how that turned out.
We have a wood burning stove and kept it full of wood and stayed relatively warm in the living room. It's like camping in our house. We bought plug in radiators for the bedrooms and a wall mounted heater for the kids' bathroom but the house is still cold and there is a breeze through the recessed lighting in the ceiling. Since we are renting, we aren't really in a position to insulate the attics but Erik has done some weatherproofing of all the outside doors, replaced broken "wedges" on the window latches so they close tightly, and taped shut the cat door in the laundry room.
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| Day two: Maggie and I napped and Cate spent an hour in the back yard creating this magnificent snow man. |
It was as tall as she was (nearly). she used feijoas for the eyes (a native fruit) and a leaf for the lips. Not too shabby.
On the evening of day two, there was a beautiful sunset.
