Second Tree Blog » winter

Alana’s Snow Wardrobe

Julie — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:02:00 +0000

Alana really enjoys changing her clothes. Her choice of clothing during this snowstorm started off pretty standard – snow pants, warm coat, hat, etc. As the past few days have come and gone, so too has her sense of winter clothing. Apparently, she is ready for spring fashions with sundresses and bathing suits.

Record Snowfalls

Julie — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:24:00 +0000

Rewind to the end of January when Benton whined about the lack of snow. His question to me was “When are going to get snow that is fun?” We had a few fun snows earlier in the season, but January was mostly dusting or too fast to melt.

Officially, we have snow that is fun……. Snow has been coming down since about 9:30am Friday morning. I shoveled 4 times yesterday, trying to avoid a huge pile-up. That seemed a bit useless this morning when I looked out and could not see where my driveway started. I managed to shovel the 12+ inches that were on it. Once finished, there was another inch or so where I had already shoveled. It is starting to taper off and the blizzard warning officially ends at 4:00pm today.

Alana is going to Caroline’s house across the street at 4:00pm so I can walk with the boys down to the neighborhood sledding hill. Otherwise, we will be hanging out at home. The school carnival and the Recreation Center’s Superheros event, which we were planning to attend today, have been cancelled. Tim’s flight from Austin has been cancelled for tomorrow due to our weather, so the laundry will have to wait until Monday night. At this point, no more snow is forecasted, until tomorrow ;-]

This is a view of the backyard taken this morning about 9:00am. We have had 6+ hours of snow since these pictures were taken.

A view out the Family Room window taken this morning. If you look out toward the pine tree at the top of the picture, you see a small item in the snow – which is the almost covered fire hydrant. As of now, this item is fully buried.

Alana decided to climb on the wall and “ride the horsey”. She helped shovel the snow with a garden trowel.

Flora, Fauna, and Ice

Tim — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:46:00 +0000

Good conditions for some pretty interesting ice formations, such as all of the trees being “decorated:”

I snuck down to the pond at one point, and it was frozen over, although I’m not sure how thick it was:

So the “fauna” shot is a bit of a stretch! There were a flock of 20+ blue jays that swarmed the bird feeder next to the farmhouse each morning, Carson and I saw a couple of red-tailed hawks circling up by the farmhouse, and 7 or 8 deer came up to eat corn every evening. But, Old Man Elwyn was the only critter who moved slowly enough for me to catch him:

And…the view from the cabin. You can see the farmhouse and the barn in the distance.

I’ve actually managed to get to a satellite image of the property, but it’s so rural that the pictures are fairly low resolution. The green arrow is the farmhouse, and the picture above was taken from pretty close to the north end of that cleared area that the farmhouse is in.

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Snow + Hills = Hours and Hours of Fun

Tim — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:29:00 +0000

When we arrived Thursday late afternoon, the temperature was hovering around 20 degrees. I got everything turned on, and we thought we were in good shape. It wasn’t until after dark that we realized that there was no hot water — although the gas was on, it had really low pressure, which was enough to turn on the flames on the water heater (it’s a tankless system — when you turn on hot water in the house, the flames come on in the heater and it heats the water as it passes from the pump to the faucets), but not enough to turn them on high enough to actually heat the water. Fortunately, Bob had shown me where “they occasionally shut off the flow of gas to the house to build up pressure on the one well — happens maybe once a year” (there are two gas wells that he’s tapped off of, and one of them was open to the house, but the other was not). Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying quite as much attention as I should have when he showed me which well that was. The only ATV available was the older one, which is 2-wheel drive and not all that great on the snow. Nonetheless, I headed out to see if the well had indeed been closed off. I overshot the turnoff to the well I needed to go to and went to a different well. THAT didn’t look familiar! I backtracked, got stuck a couple of times, but ultimately found the well, turned it on, and we were in business. Well. Sort of. It was too late for the heater to catch up with the dropping temperatures, so we didn’t top 65 degrees in the farmhouse that night!

The forecast was for the weather to warm up into the 40s by late Friday (it wound up being more like Saturday), so both boys headed out in the dark on Thursday night to satiate their need for speed. And, on Friday, we were surprised by the arrival of their cousins, who stayed for the weekend.

There was sledding on various hills (below are the second set of hills they hit — that’s Uncle Brett at the top of the hill about to take a brief spin as a “kid” before heading back home):

I swear Benton would spend more time describing what he’d done or was going to do than he would actually doing something if there was an adult within a half-mile:

I learned to both keep my distance and to heavily advocate for the light saucers, lest I be comandeered as the equipment lift:

And even Alana got into the action. This quickly progressed from me pulling her up/down some gentle slopes to me running down some steeper slopes trying to keep up with her and hoping like crazy that I didn’t break a limb.

Fire-Fanning Gadgetry Misapplied

Tim — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:06:00 +0000

A couple of years ago, I tracked down a hand-cranked bellows sold by Campmor. This was shortly after Benton had gotten going with coaxing campfires back from glowing embers when he woke up in the morning. Frankly, I was a little concerned that he would hyperventilate some day, as using his lungs to fan the flames always held more appeal than wandering around and collecting an adequate supply of tinder.This is a nifty little device — it looks like a fishing reel, and when you turn the crank, it blows air. It was so popular that, with the first one, Benton managed to give himself a blister from blowing it on flames long after a fire was going. And…it wore out after a few months. So, we got another one shortly after we moved to Ohio, which we left at Bob’s farm in West Virginia.

The question is: does Benton really know how to use it?

Hmmmm. THIS flame is already too big!

And THIS flame…um…flame?

Thanks to the distraction of sleddable snow and a couple of cousins, Benton did not spend the entire weekend: 1) blowing on fires that were long past needing fanning, and 2) experimenting with how much powdery snow he could displace by blowing on it.

As if Elwyn’s Beard Wasn’t Gray Enough Already…

Tim — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:19:00 +0000

(more to come in the coming days from our weekend in West Virginia…)

A Bit More of the Snow…

Tim — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 17:42:00 +0000

Doing a bit of catching up here. It hasn’t actually snowed for a few weeks, with the exception of a light dusting we got last night. But, I finally got around to getting pictures downloaded from the camera after the past couple of weeks of semi-chaos.

Snow in our driveway — even Alana got into the action:

We walked down to a little hill near the end of our street and did some snow saucering (I’m not entirely sure where Carson dug up that hat, but he wears it quite a bit. I’m not proud).

And, by “we,” I mean that Benton and Carson did a lot, Julie did a little…and I did it once.

Word to the wise: if you weigh 50+ pounds more than your spouse, and she says, “Don’t worry about that little patch at the bottom of the hill where the snow is melted next to the lip of the asphalt walkway — it’s just a little bump!” you should be prepared to mildly bruise your tailbone and then relegate yourself to the roll of action photographer.

Let is snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Julie — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:04:00 +0000

Our backyard at about 10:00am this morning…...

Finally!!! After asking many, many times about when it would snow, the kids awoke to a pleasant surprise this morning. The snow started falling last night and had accumulated to about 2-3″ by the time Benton was up. More snow was predicted for the rest of the day, so about 140 different schools in the area were closed or had a delayed start. Of course, that did not include our district, so Benton could only play in the snow until the bus arrived at 8:40am. This meant a quick breakfast and out the door for us. We were outside by 8:00am ready to shovel the entire driveway into a sledding hill. We succeeded to make a small hill.

At about 8:30 am, Carson awoke devastated that he was going to miss the snow. He fussed loudly enough about my not waking him up to come outside, that Alana was up in no time and ready to head out. Fortunately, Grandma Marilyn was here to help ensure they had some cereal and clothes on before heading outside. So, while I trotted to the bus stop with Benton, they got ready.

At the bus stop, we were the only people not sitting inside a warmed up mini-van awaiting the bus. The 4 kids that catch a bus about 5 minutes before Benton’s arrives were not so enamored with the snow, apparently. Benton got on the bus with assurances from me that we would continue our snow play as soon as he gets home.

By the time I returned, it was time to suit up Carson and Alana. We headed out and had a great time piling snow, sledding, and throwing snowballs. At one point, Carson tried to teach Alana how to make a snow angel. It was a very sweet thing to witness. Needless to say, I had a great time playing “kid” in the snow and am looking forward to the arrival of the bus at 4:00pm so I can enjoy it with all 3 kids at the same time.

Of course, I am not fool enough to think this will be everyone’s reaction after our 10th snowstorm, but for now, let it snow, let it snow, LET IT SNOW!!