Winter Advisory

Here we go, the wind is howling something fierce. Time to batten down the hatches.

Snap Circuits

Snap circuit play with Daddy

Sun Dogs

Tuesday morning I was out early gathering groceries, as in I left home before the sun was up. On the way home I saw this sundog but I was driving on the highway and there was no good photo capturing spot except the middle of the road. So I drove on home. Later on I saw this picture posted to a local Facebook paper and snapped a screenshot for the blog.

The picture does not show the whole sun dog as the rainbow effect shows on both sides of the sun. 

An explanation of sun dogs is on the photo. Cool?

Awakening

If you have read this blog for any length of time you may have noticed the undercurrent for about six to seven years that I am exhausted, or let me say was exhausted. I began making a few changes about three weeks ago and wowzers has my energy level changed. I would love to tell you all about what the changes are but, sorry, I am just not ready to go public with what I am doing. When I am ready my blog will be the first place I share my life choices and what I am doing. I do apologize for being so vague but I just did need to share that I am feeling so much better and more energized and I sleep better most nights.

Let me give an example. I usually spend Saturdays at home and cook, bake and clean and drop into bed exhausted but I had promised my crew of wonderful Blessings that we would go watch a couple of the guys from church, aka their friends, play hockey this morning. Since we were out we had to pick up a couple of items at the store, isn't that the way it always goes? After the errands one of the crew asked to go to the library so we dropped off our items from town and a big brother who wanted to stay home and headed to the library. By the time we got home it was about three oclock and we had been gone for about four and a half hours on a Saturday. When we arrived home I began prepping pizza dough for dinner and cooking up some chicken tenders for some chicken ready in the fridge for week day lunches, emptied the dishwasher and getting the crew moving to do some general picking up around the house. Well, as I write this, dinner has been cooked, eaten and the kitchen cleaned up. Food has been prepared for First Sunday Fellowship tomorrow night at church and I am sitting in front of the computer writing a blog post (I ususally blog from my phone app) and doing a little planning for Benjamin's week with Five in A Row and I am not exhausted or sitting on the couch because I just cannot get up and get going after sitting down for dinner. I still have to give a little fella a bath and iron Sunday clothes but I am not dreading those usually dreaded chores. Honestly, my husband usually gives Benjamin his Saturday night bath and puts him to bed. Tonight, Mom gives the bath and reads the bedtime book and plays lullaby music on Pandora until the little guy drifts off into sleepy town.

Let me put that is a nutshell, I was away from home for over four hours and still got the same amount of Saturday kitchen work accomplished and I am typing out a blog post at 6:30 pm. I am not exhaustedly working as quickly as possible to get the to do items finished so I can finally go to bed.


Energy is a very good thing and I do not take it for granted....now to get a better cleaning routine into practice and I will be over the top thrilled.

January Slump

January is my slump month, or maybe recovery month, or it is dark and cold so I stay home month. Whatever it is, I rarely leave home and I am happy about it. 

Elisabeth had an appointment so we left the house, it was cold, we were bundled.

Benjamin and I had some art time with pastels one afternoon while we were having our FIAR read with Madeline. 

My art

Saturday Outdoors Version

Four out of the six of us went for a snow machine ride on Saturday. 

Elisabeth, Daddy I getting machines started and warmed up. 

Benjamin has really improved his driving skills this winter.

He had a blast riding in unridden on deep snow. He is really getting practice on which way to lean. 

The convey, I was the caboose.

Happy New Year to You

Happy New Year to you from Alaska.

My older three out by the bonfire, sigh, how did they get so old? 

They head off for a two day teen winter retreat. I will not know what to do with only one child in the house. 

Fluffy Snow

After the freezing rain the temperature dropped enough for some big snowflakes. I love big, fluffy snow NOT freezing rain. 

Then the big snowflakes subsided and it showed small flakes. 

I did drive Judith to the pool for swim practice this afternoon and the roads were not so horrible. 

The Dreaded Weather

Our Alaskan winter has been absolutely nothing to complain about. The temperature has only gotten close to twenty below one time all winter. The temperature has remained a happy *below freezing yet not too cold* making outdoor activity actually pleasant.

Until today. Look at this weather screen shot, this weather makes me sad. We shall survive though, we shall go on.

Gingerbread and The Bosch

A few years ago I saved up and purchased a Bosch mixer. I do love this heavy duty workhorse. This is a great machine for bread and double batches of gingerbread cookie dough. 

We took last year off from gingerbread creations but this year we are back in business with a gingerbread village in the works. I wait until a few days before Christmas to start so the kids can eat their creations, yea, we make them edible. 

The dough for our village and we even had to make one more batch. I think we over sized our pieces. 

The planning of the gingerbread village

Benjamin rolling out some dough

Judith cutting out her pieces.

I need to take pictures of the final project during the daylight hours.