The big cold

Well, that happened.  We took no real notice of all of the weather warnings and winter rewarded us with dumping a full foot and a half of snow on our place.  The snow is higher than my boots when I slog through it every day to feed, water and gather eggs.

At least the sky has been bright and beautiful, part of the time anyway.

As luck would have it, it was also a full moon.

We were basically snowed in for a long weekend.  

It made me think about how much my life has changed over the years.  If this had happened 4 or 5 years ago I could tell you exactly how I would have spend the last three days: luxuriously  lying in bed under the covers with a coffee cup full of wine reading The Shining as the chill crept in from under the old windows.

I'm not saying it was "Overlook Manor" here exactly but my job now was to make sure everyone was fed and entertained, cabin fever be dammed.    The oldest puttered around the house on his scooter (not un-like Danny with his tricycle in The Shining) and had lots of activities to enjoy.

We build a tiny xylophone, built a tic-tac-toe board, read lots of books, painted.

Watched our neighbor, God bless him, snowplow the driveway for us.  It seems like a small thing but as it was covered with a foot and a half of snow it would have taken us a solid day to shovel it. 

We fished in a tiny pond, measured each catch against a ruler and decided to throw the fish back or put it in the tiny fabric cooler.

One snowy day the oldest found a balsa plane kit in our bedroom.  "Mama let's build this!" he said.  Sigh, OK, you're right.  I bought this kit 5 or 6 years ago and have never attempted to put it together, so what could I really say but "Sure"? There are about 500 pieces, all made of paper-thin balsa wood.  So far we have made the body of the plane, the rudder, the tail and the oldest has learned lots of creative new swears.  I think I've broken every paper-thin piece at least 4 times and super-glued the plane to my fingers more times than I can count.  

There were some inventive meals cooked.  The freezer was relieved of a chicken, some fish, venison sausage and frozen pasta dough.  We used some canned apples and bruchetta.  We didn't go to the store until things were dire: the house was out of cheese, wine and diapers.   It was a wonderful three days of being isolated from the world and together as a family.