Complain

OK I am just going to complain about the weather for a second. We received another round of heaving snow last week. I am tired of the cold weather, not necessarily the snow, but of always being cold. My car is cold, my house is cold, my bed is freezing, and when I get out of the shower it is cold. It is cold when I am walking Mallory into school and Nathan just wants to stay outside and kick the snow. The cold weather exacerbates the ice dams that are clogging my gutters and the mound of snow that I have to drive over everyday to get into my driveway. The mounds of snow prohibit the dogs from pooping in the grass so they poop on the sidewalk, the driveway and in our garage. That means that we are constantly stepping in it. I can deal with the cloudy dreary days, those do not get me down it is the constant below freezing days that get to me. I have to wear three layers of shirts in my house and my husband keeps asking me why I keep wearing my favorite sweatshirt around the house. I tell him that it is because it is too cold to not wear it. What I do love about the cold is that it produces snow, lots and lots of snow. I love that it is banked up around my drive way and along the sidewalk because of shoveling. I love seeing how the snow falls and the interesting creations it makes. I love that when I look at the window I see white snow covered ground. I like when our week gets disturbed because of snow days or that we are told we should not drive on the roads. I love that it is only temporary. I also like the icicles that form because of our clogged ice dammed gutters. So just now talking about what I like about the cold I am feeling better. I actually feel kind of warm sitting in my dining room.

Speaking of snow here are some pictures

Here is our fence in front of the house

And our almost covered mailbox

These are the snow banks that are taller than the kids.


That says 16 inches.



Nathan was sick again this weekend. He was coughing on Friday and on Sunday he was in full blown heaving breathing mode. It was not as bad as the last time but not minor like they were before the last time. He again asked for treatments and did not want one of them to be over. So I guess that is good that at least they are working, even if they are temporary and a band aid for what is really going on.

I have gobs and gobs of girl scout cookies sitting in front of me. Julianne sold 161 this year which was great for her. Her Mimi sold about half of that but she did sell the rest. We went to my work and she asked people and we went around the neighborhood. So now comes the hard task of actually getting them off my dining room table.

I attended an Energy conference on Tuesday and Wednesday which was pretty interesting. It was your typical good ole energy district boys in attendance and a few women. The guest lunch speaker was quiet interesting. He talked the whole time about Climategate, which is a conspiracy theory between scientist who track historical temperature data and who report on global warming. The theory is that the scientists who collected this data and said that the world is warming eliminated more than half of the temperature tracking monitors from the study, did not participate in peer to peer review and are missing other relevant information. Because of these flaws in the study and data scientist on the other side claim that the world is not warming and the ice caps are not melting. I have already heard about Climategate but what I did not know is that Climategate discussions are not occurring within the US. Dampening the validity or even discussing Climategate may be because of political and media pressures. If we learn that the earth is not warming then do we need environmental policy like Cap-n-Trade? Doesn't our entire alternative fuels push collapse if we don't have to worry about global warming? Regardless of this theory and what is true or not true we should still be finding alternative sources of energy, conserving our existing natural resources, and living within our capacity.


Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-weather seasons (I think it would be boring to only have two seasons)
-Seeing 4 deer while on my morning run (I was actually a little nervous thinking that they could turn on me and attack me and no one would know)
-watching Mallory read a story in school.

Snow pictures

Well I have finally been motivated to post our snow pictures. With two large snowstorms we have plenty of snowy pictures. I think the total was around 10 inches of snow and most if it is still here. So it has been fun. Julianne is in winter wonderland heaven.



It is great because they plow all the cul-de-sac snow in front of our house so we get extra large snow banks.



Julianne had her grandparent day at school last week. They did their interviews during Christmas break and Nana was in town then so she interviewed her. However, I did not know that the grandparents actually came into the classroom until a couple weeks before the event. So anyway, she did her one grandparent that lives our of town. Oh well, I figure if the other kids have her same teacher we can rotate grandparents for the event. Additionally, most of the grandparents were not at the event so she was not the only child. Well she prepared a slideshow (three slides) and all the kids stood up and presented their grandparent in front of all the viewers. I took the kids and we watched her presentation. She did a great job and we will send Nana her portrait and the paper that Julianne wrote.




Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-lots of snow (I am getting a little tired of the cold weather, but I guess we need it for the snow)

Weekly post

Well Nathan is feeling better. He came into our bedroom that Thursday night after having a rough breathing day. We knew that he was not feeling well when he came without his lovely or pacy. He just laid in the middle of us, with his hot labored breathing body and went to sleep. It is always hard hearing him breathe so hard when he is sleeping. He is not running, playing or doing any other activity except sleeping and he is still breathing hard. On Friday he was back to normal breathing and just had his usual coughing. So he still has a lot of junk in his lungs but is acting like regular Nathan.

He had his 3 year doctor check up last Monday and weighed 31 pounds and was 36.5 inches tall. I think that puts him in almost to the 50 percentile for weight and almost to the 25 percentile for height. So that is good. I also told her that I thought his asthma episodes were getting better and like I said in my last post I spoke too soon.

Julianne started sign language class last week and has another one today. She loves it and she loves to practice it. I can't get her to do her homework or reading without having a crying/whining episode but she will practice her sign language without any reminders. So I am glad that she really enjoys it and we will see where it takes her.

I finished with my gigantic purse and hopefully soon I will take pictures of it. I actually have two more steps to complete it but those are minor steps. It is really big and I really have no idea what I will use it for. It was not that difficult but it was nice to have someone tell us what to do instead of having to read the directions and figure it out. It has pipping on it so it was nice to work with that again since I have not used pipping for a long time. I really wanted to use the zipper for the bag but she said that the zipper is really difficult so I decided against it even though I felt more pressure not to try it then to try it. So anyway, it is completed and I like the construction of it and the class was fun.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-having the time to sew
-running in freshly fallen show this morning.