Winter Wonderland

Living in a colder climate comes with its own set of challenges. I start to feel trapped in my home. Snow, ice and mud get tracked into the house. I have a hard time getting warmed up. We have a really short growing season.

Still, I really do love the winters here for a number of reasons.

I enjoy having our warm fires at night. It feels so cozy and brings the family together. We enjoy the tasty popcorn cooked in the fire and both our pets lounge on the rug until we put them to bed. I don't even mind too much when Danielle plays in the soot and ashes the next day.

I LOVE to iceskate. We have a short season, and I don't get a lot of opportunities with Danielle, but I've managed to go a couple times this year.

I am also happy to see my kids skating. It makes my heart happy to know that they will have fond memories of being out on the ice. Brandon and Connor both love Hockey and are pretty good at it.


The city also started a new tradition last year that has been popular. This weekend was our second annual ice sculpture event. We watched artists carving the ice for a couple hours. It was fascinating how they started from a stack of blocks and went from this:


To this:


From this:


To this:

And from this:


To this:



To this:


Our boys loved watching and even tried their hands at it with their pocketknives.


I could have stood there all day, but Danielle was fed up and tired after a while. The sculptures are just beautiful, and we had a nice sense of community as people walked up and down Main St. and visited with one another. It's times like these that I am happy to live in a small town where people know one another.


Tonight, Nathan and I went back down there after we put the kids to bed and as we were walking along a woman approached us. She thanked Nathan for bringing something so nice to our community. I was happy that he was appreciated. We are where we are supposed to be.

My favorite present

This past Christmas Season I knew that I would have to slow down what I usually try to do. It just isn't as possible to make every dessert and participate in all the holiday events with a baby. I am happy to announce that I bought nearly all our gifts online, and had everything purchased, wrapped and mailed before Thanksgiving. It made the month much nicer and easier to remember the meaning of Christmas.

Every night that we were home in the evenings, we sang songs around the Christmas tree. This is what always helps me to feel the Spirit of Christ in the season. In the past I enforced the tradition that I had growing up, but I now have created my own jailers. The kids insist that we sing, and Brandon often proclaims it his favorite tradition. Nathan even made up a new song: "Randolph the red-nosed Beagle." It seemed a little less blasphemous to sing that than, "Hark, the Herald Beagle Barks," or "O Come, All Ye Beagles."

We went caroling a couple of nights, saw a play, celebrated Andrew's birthday as a family, visited our friends for a few days and spent several evenings reading Christmas stories. I baked in a new order this year. I made something new every few days. We all had a taste of each treat, and then wrapped up the rest to give away. No one got the variety plate, but they got something. I never felt overwhelmed, and we still enjoyed most of our holiday treats....just one at a time.

We kicked off the month with our traditional holiday fondue shared with some friends and ended it with a Christmas Eve day at Hooper Pool.

The weather was glorious, and the water felt perfect.

This year, I planned my school so that we could have a three week break. It helped me to feel less rushed. Instead of trying to cram all our traditions into one day, we watched a movie near the beginning of the month, made our seafood dinner a few days before Christmas and went out to pizza on the Eve of Christmas Eve. It was a nice pace, and kept our household from becoming quite as chaotic.

Christmas Day itself was nearly perfect. We had the right balance of gifts, we had the missionaries and a lady in our ward to dinner. We ate something we've never made before: Cornish Game Hens, played games and watched a devotional by President Monson. I wouldn't change a thing.

My favorite present was from Nathan. He made my first year blog into a book.

It was the perfect gift for me and is so pretty.

And I love it.