Not Fwing Yet.

When you have a room that looks like this:
You have a teenager in the house. We have a Polish exchange student, Asia, living in our house for a little while. Good thing we made the house bigger, huh? She has been a pretty good sport about the lack of doors and chilly morning temps.

Makili woke up yesterday and said, "Is it fwing (spring) now?" Apparently since he didn't see any snow on the trees he thought we were in the clear. Oh how I wish it were true! Instead we've engaged in other things: craft time, experimenting with the shower, making funny faces, wearing Asia's "fancy boots" (it cracks me up when Makili comes whining to me saying "I want fancy boots!") and making forts. In the meantime, I am busy ordering seeds and dreaming of spring, and very busy with the exchange student business!

I'm really trying to have a good attitude.

I mean it. I really am trying. I try to have fun skating, sledding, and the like. But ANOTHER 18 inches? You have to be kidding me. I'm seriously going to lose me mind.

Moffat Pond Fun

One of the families that hosts exchange students through me has a pond and we have been working to see that enough people are skating on it to make shoveling all these huge piles of snow off of it! They are so generous to allow us to spend time there, and it is so perfect for the kids because it has skating, lights, bonfire, sledding, and a bathroom! We're pretty lucky. We had such a fun weekend with teenagers, tweens, and toddlers! This is what living in Maine is all about! It was pleasantly warm this weekend, which helped.

A little bit of Liam and a new phase

We spent a short window of time with Raph's cousin, Christian, and his wife Mags this weekend. Makili loved spending time with 6 year old Liam, their son. The two of them latched right onto Makili's new favorite toy - legos! And he built his current favorite thing - airplanes (Lightning is still very popular around here, but once in a while we get a little break). It was fun to watch them build together and fly their airplanes around the room. And Liam, the Florida beach boy, seemed to enjoy the snow and sledding too. He had us in stitches at time with some of the funny stuff he said, like when he told us about his girlfriend, Megan, who he described as "fun-size."

Thank you husband

This time of year I have a tough time. I know I should take the kids outside everyday, but it is such a struggle. I can get past all the snow gear (we seem to have that figured out) but once we're outside, Remick pretty much cries the whole time and Makili loves it for about 10 minutes, but the snow is so deep he can barely play in it outside the driveway, and while I'd love some exercise, I can't really do much with the two of them when I'm home by myself. So this a long drawn-out way of saying of excusing myself for doing other things. Mostly curling up by the fire and immersing myself in work, which is plentiful right now.I have my little "helpers" in the kitchen.

And we come up with really quality projects:
But today, being the third snow day in the last 8 days, I allowed Raph to coerce me into dragging the kids on a snowshoe adventure. We went showshoeing last weekend on a trial basis just to see how I liked it - this being the first year we both had snowshoes. It was a little different towing children while snowshoeing not only because of the added work and weight but also because of the non-stop crying from a certain little one who is a bit neurotic about snow touching him. Makili thought being towed around on his carriage was great and would have kept going all day except for his "pants sticking to his butt." And now that we've adequately recreated for the day (weekend, month) I'll feel okay about hiding by the fire for the rest of what appears to be a frigid weekend!

Seeing the Beauty

I have a hard time this time of year. The tunnels to dig to the driveway, to the shed, the compost pile. But it really is beautiful if you can lift your eyes.

Life in Maine

Life in Maine includes snowy days, blizzards, feeding the fire, etc. But with those things come absolutely breathtakingly beautiful days like yesterday for sledding with friends. Makili was fairly fearless and adorable. And Remick was happy as long as we let him eat as many cookies as he wanted:)Raph teaching Makili to go down backwards...

Blizzard

We got hammered with snow yesterday. Raph's school is still closed again today. Wimps. (That's what Mainers say about closing school for a 2nd day.) I wish I could say that it was a great day, but honestly I woke up in a grump. I had stayed home with the kids the entire previous day and yesterday I just wanted to get out. I envisioned a really awesome hike in the snow together as a family on snowshoes, if I was lucky. I didn't count on 50 mile/hour winds. And while we were forecasted to get less than a foot of snow, we definitely got more than that. With the winds, we ended up with huge drifts that are closer to 3 feet deep. (Don't ask Raph about how much snow we got though, cause he's like the Hawaiians with their waves - a ridiculously conservative estimator.) So our hike was a strike out, though we did venture out there a few times for a break from the inside craziness. It was nice to have a bigger house though. I made Makili run up and down the stairs for a while.

We painted a lot, which we've been doing for two day, and Makili did surprise me by mixing up hi subject matter a bit. He painted a really beautiful apple tree. I find it interesting that whatever I paint he paints. I painted a picture of Makili and Remick in the bath, and then he painted one too. Maybe that's how they start? I should take a picture of them cause they're awesome.

We ended our day though with a really awesome night hike together as a family. The wind had died down substantially and Makili was able to walk on our snowy road without wading through waist-high snow. We all had a flashlight, even Remick who was in the sled being dragged, though we were able to turn them off for a while and just be in the silent woods with a yellow sky. It was a much better ending to the day. And today we woke up and Raph made waffles, so it's getting better already.