Frozen

Actually, Peeper and I did go see the movie Frozen last night, as a little something special to make up for Shrike getting called in to work at the very last minute. She loved it, and thanks to a friend who unexpectedly hooked us up with a copy, she's watched it another time or two today.

But we're also pretty frozen today. It's around (below?) 20 degrees out there, with snow falling all day and several inches of accumulation. Peeper was already scheduled to be off school, for a teacher inservice, but all the other schools in the area, including the college where I work, were off too.

Peeper does love her snow. I think she went out in it about four or five times; I made her go by herself at 8 am, when the ground was barely covered, because I knew I had another trip or two ahead of me later in the day. As it turned out, I think I went with her twice and Shrike twice.

She wanted so badly to build a snowman. Light, fluffy, dry, 20'F snow is great when you have to shovel and clear off the car, but not so much for snowmen.

After we came in, I heard her in the bedroom where Shrike was sleeping. She said something to her about drying off PerfectPup, and went and got a towel from the linen closet. Then another. And another.

I went in to see what was going on, and found Shrike still asleep, and poor PerfectPup like this.

That pink thing beside her is Peeper toy blow dryer. Running.

This is what she left behind when she finally got fed up and walked off. I guess Peeper was right that she needed to be cleaned up.

Galoot on the other hand, was just keeping Mommy nice and warm.

A few more trips out in the snow, including helping Mommy shovel, and an attempt to fix up her snowman, and then we had a perfect snowy weather dinner - hot soup and hot-ish chocolate.

Peeper declared this "the bestest soup ever!" (Campbell's chicken noodle.)

Looks like she could use it.

Welcome Back to Pennsylvania!

This is why nobody had school today.

In case you can't quite make that out, it says -4°F. On our back patio. That is officially the coldest temperature I've ever experienced. I saw zero on this thermometer once.

And while I've seen 100°F plenty down in Texas, I've also only seen it here exactly once. The summer that our air conditioner was out.

Snow!

We got our first significant snowfall today, and Peeper thoroughly enjoyed it.

These photos were taken early in the storm, it actually got a good bit deeper than that. They're all I got because I didn't take my phone out with me when I was actually playing in it with her, so unfortunately, there's no video of both of us sledding down the tiny hill between our neighbor's yard and our own.

Hot, Hot, Hot

I didn't get any photos of Peeper today, but I did get this.

Snow Day

Monday is usually a Peeper / Mommy day, but Mama had a day off of work because of snow, so we had a bonus family day!

Of course, there was snow play and snowman building involved. Unfortunately, I didn't have my phone outside with me to get video when Peeper was doing somersaults all over the yard in the snow, but I did get a few photos of her eating some watermelon with Mr. Snowman.

Blizzard!

Yeah, this was pretty much it for us.

Snow Much Fun 12/26/12

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So Far, So Good

We seem to be weathering the storm pretty well here. Our power has stayed on, and we don't seem to have any damage.

It's been raining all day, but not very heavily, and it's gotten quite windy at times.

Depending on which forecast you choose to believe, we're either past the worst of it now, or we're in a bit of a lull, and will been seeing a lot more wind over the next hour, then tapering off.

If the Weather.com StormTracker is to be believed, the center of the storm will be passing within about fifty miles of us between now and morning. However, the winds shown there don't seem to jive up with the local hourly forecasts, so I don't know what to believe or expect.

I do know that, although things seem to be fine at our house so far, that's certainly not the case all over town. We're seeing reports of a power outages, downed trees and power lines, flooding, and some roof and other damage to homes. And that's just what people and the local newspaper are talking about on Facebook.

It looks like we'll still be getting some pretty good wind gusts through morning, but it seems like we've made it through the worst of it with no problems, as far as we can tell. Let's hope it stays that way!

Storm Preparations

As some of you know, and some might have guessed, we are well inland, but still in the path of Hurricane Sandy.

I think our biggest risks here are winds that are likely to be in the 35-40 mph range this evening, and power outage. Our power here has been quite stable in previous storms, but if it does go, it's going to be out for a while, just because the repair crews will be so overwhelmed.

It's just raining a bit right now, but I think we should be getting the worst of it here between 3 - 11 pm.

I may make one more run to the grocery for more milk (as long as we have power, and can make coffee, I want milk! Then, as long as we can keep it cool, we want it for cereal.), ice if it can be found, and there was one more thing . . . oh! charcoal - we have some burgers in the freezer, so if we're out of power for a few days after the weather has cleared, we should probably grill them up. Again - if it can be found.

I also need to find a cable that's required to connect our phones to the car charger that I bought. One I locate one of the boxes that the phones came in, I should be set to charge both phones and iPad from the cars.

Eveything's secured outside. I'd prefer to have my car in the garage and take our chances with the truck, but we had a big pile of brush and limbs at the curb (from cutting those trees back) so we loaded it into the truck bed, and pulled it into the garage.

So, the cars are in the grass beside the driveway, on the other side from the big tree. They probably aren't out of reach if the whole thing were to come down, but that's not likely. At least they're not right under the branches that are more likely to go.

We're pretty stocked up, although if I go to the store, I'll probably pick up a few more things, if they can be found.

So, that's where we stand.

I think we are likely to be highly inconvenienced for a while, but I doubt that we're in any actual danger.

Assuming we can keep the computer, phones or iPad up and running, I'll post updates as I have them.

If you're in the path, please taken the necessary precautions and be careful!

Brrrr

The temperature right now (at around 11 pm) is 24 degrees. It was in the low teens last night.

A lovely day to take my little panda out to play.

Lazy Sunday

Well, not too, too, lazy, I guess, in that we did do some last minute cleaning for Peeper's "Bear Party" tomorrow morning. (But not panic cleaning, it actually wasn't too bad, believe it or not.)


We started with some leftover mac and cheese for lunch. Peeper requested "a hotdog with dips" so I decided to liven it up a bit.

This was supposed to be a spider. Yeah, not so much. More of a crab, maybe?

That "cocktail fork" came with our corndog nuggets the other night, and she had the best time stabbing them with it, so we decided to hang onto it. I might buy some real ones, just for the fun factor. 

Evidently, she got a hollow leg for her birthday. I swear, she's eaten more in the past four days than she has in the past three years!

Of course, for her, that still means that she left a couple of bites behind for the doggies.

And, of course, we went outside to play in the snow a couple of times. We figured we couldn't say no, since it's not likely to last much longer, and it may be a while (I hope) before we get any more.

She had a great time swinging, until we made her stop because she was about to fall asleep, at five o'clock!

I think I understand why she keeps referring to her panda hat and gloves as a "costume."

I even cooked real (not from a box!) food for dinner. I've got a whole post coming up on that!

Snowtober (Octsnowber?)

As predicted, we got a significant snowfall today. Our four-or-so inches (according to the tops of the cars) was considerably less than the eight to twelve they were calling for last night, but I'm seeing photos on Facebook of as much as nine inches not far from us.

We were lucky enough to keep our power on through it all, although I'm also hearing reports of lots of outages around the area from trees down on power lines.

Since the temperature is right around freezing, this is a very wet, heavy snow, and most of the trees still have their leaves on them, which greatly increases the amount of snow-catching surface area. All that adds up to a lot more weight on the trees than in your typical winter storm, and a lot more downed limbs.

We lots a few branches - including a couple of big ones - on one of our lilac trees, but its low and has nothing under it, so that will just be an inconvenience to clean up, no harm done.

When we saw that, though, I did go out and move my car from underneath the big tree in the front yard, just in case!

Despite the forecasts, we really didn't believe it was going to happen until we saw it coming down this morning, so we hadn't told Peeper anything about it ahead of time.

I was so torn this morning, when she whispered to Shrike, "I want to get up. Wet's wet Mama sweep." because I really wanted to stay in bed, but I also really wanted to see her reaction. I figured Shrike could tell me about her reaction.

Of course, she's loving it. She's been outside to play in it four times, I think. I managed to avoid two of those trips, once because I was still in bed, and once because I was cooking lunch. Thank you, Shrike, for taking the cold, wet duty!

Four inches on the cars.

This just does not seem right.

This is the lilac tree with the downed limbs. Some of the ones that are touching the ground are just weighted down and should spring back up when the snow is off of them, but a couple are broken off.

She had a great time in the snow.

Giving her "snowman" (such as he is) a kiss.

Safe and Sound

I know that I'm sort of coy on here about our exact location, but I think I've made our general area pretty obvious, so I thought I'd flatter myself by thinking that someone out there might be worried about us, in regards to Hurricane Irene.

Although we do live in a mid-Atlantic state, we're not close to the actual Atlantic at all, and our local forecast is only calling for "scattered thunderstorms" and maximum winds of 25 - 35 mph, so we're fine here.

It has been quite overcast and humid all day, with that feeling that something is coming, but right now, it's just a little breezy and raining a tiny bit. It actually may have stopped raining, but I'm sure that will be off and on as the outer bands pass over us.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the earthquake a few days ago, many people in our town did feel it. One friend even reports watching the walls of her house undulate.

Shrike says that she heard the windows rattling and felt her chair move "like a wave" but thought it was the nearby Army depot blowing things up, as they are wont to do.

Me? I was sitting about six feet from her, and felt nothing. I may have heard the windows and had the same thought and it didn't really even register, but I was sitting in my rocky computer chair, with Peeper wiggling around in my lap, so I'm sure I wrote off any movement as her.

So, to summarize:

Earthquake - we're fine.

Hurricane - we're fine.

I am a little concerned about these two recent sightings, though:

Spring!

Spring?

Snow Fun

After a few days of temperatures in the 60s and even 70s last week, winter is back, bringing several inches of snow to make its point.

Yeah, yeah, it's still February, we get it.

Now go away.

Peeper, on the other hand, was thrilled.

Last night, about half-inch into the snow storm, I put a big bowl outside to collect some for a little project I've been planning for a while.

When Shrike brought the bowl in the morning, Peeper was all excited about it, so I scraped some off into a smaller bowl for her to play with. Of course, it immediately went onto the floor, so I put it in a pan and we made a snowman.

Sort of.

Then, this evening, she played outside in the snow for a while.

She was not supposed to be playing in the snow in these clothes. She was supposed to be getting in the car to go to the grocery store. I decided that we were in no rush for the grocery, so we went back in, put on snow clothes and played in the backyard for a while.

Then, we had a bit of a meltdown (Peeper, not the snow) but eventually made it to the grocery store, and when we got home, we made snow ice cream!

There's not much to the recipe:

Snow Ice Cream

A big bowl of clean snow (I pretty much filled the big measuring cup bowl. How big is that?)
1 cup sugar (I actually used Splenda)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup milk

1. Mix it all up.
2. Top, if desired. (We desired. Hershey's dark chocolate syrup.)
3. Eat. 

It's not bad, if you don't expect it to taste much like ice cream. Peeper liked it.

How much snow did we get overnight? There was already about a half-inch down when I put this giant bowl out, and this is what it looks like after taking out the part that we played with this morning, and filling the bowl at the right to make ice cream.

(No, we did not eat that much ice cream. It gets much smaller when you add the milk and start stirring.)