A Good Time Was Had By All

Well, the grandparents returned home today, and I don't think 10 days have ever passed more quickly! There were horsey rides, bicycle rides, snow, sun, cupcakes, Easter eggs, and more. We all had a blast.

Week one of Kyle's Spring break flew by, and I now get to spend the next week detoxing the kids. No more dessert every night, no more endless board games and Barbie movies, no more all-day pajama-wearing... starting tomorrow. I guess I'll be detoxing myself, as well, since I'll have to stop ignoring the laundry, I'll have to start playing with my own kids again, and there will be no more trips to New York with Shaun.

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted!

Blizzard Update | Day 2

Sometime between yesterday when I shoveled inches of light, powdery, fluffy snow and this morning when Shaun got his turn to shovel the falling snow turned very heavy, dense, and wet. While this was unfortunate for poor Shaun it made for excellent snowmen! It still has not stopped snowing, and I'd have to guess the snowfall total to be about 20 inches or so.

Right after lunch we bundled up our little snowbabies and headed out into the backyard for some sledding and giant snowman-making. I'm happy to report that the endeavor wore them out, and two of the three are currently sleeping. Shaun is soon to follow suit. It is his turn for a nap after all.

Let it snow!

I woke up to the most beautiful sight this morning! Snow! The kids and I were all terribly excited. Imagine my happiness when it continued to snow right on through the morning and we ended up accumulating about two inches of snow. It was a sight to behold. I even took pictures to document the occurrence. I never expected to be so lucky as to experience snowfall on May 26th.

If you're wondering what happened to the real Betsy (Alien abduction? Medication? Too much Wheel of Fortune? Perhaps this is just the result of spending all day with preschoolers?) I would like to assure you that she's fine and well. She has decided that since all the begging and demanding in the world has not been able to sway this Newfoundland weather she's going to deal with it the way she would her children--reverse psychology.

You have got to be kidding

That's what I actually said when Shaun woke me up this morning with a tired, "It's snowing outside."

"You have got to be kidding," I said as I jumped out of bed to look through the window.

I had been feeling so optimistic that winter was over and we wouldn't see snow again until October. For a split second I was sure that Shaun was attempting to play a late April Fool's joke on me--I mean, it's still April. The last measurable snowfall on my Winter '08/'09 Snow Log was on March 25th, an entire 20 days ago. It was a rainy, 48F yesterday. That's beautiful weather by Newfoundland standards. It couldn't be snowing!

I peeked through the blinds covering the bedroom window and was greeted by this:

*Sigh*

I know it's not a lot of snow, but it's still snow, and when I was so hoping for sun today. Blech.

Icebergs? Check!

There are three things I'm determined to see while we're living in Newfoundland: moose, whales, and icebergs. My friends have all seen each of these, but I had yet to see any of them until Saturday. I was sitting at my computer, minding everyone else's business via Facebook, when I saw a friend's status update saying she was at Cape Spear looking at icebergs. That's right--iceberg season has arrived in Newfoundland! There have been quite a few iceberg sightings in the last couple of weeks, but I hadn't gotten a chance yet to drive around with the kids tormenting each other from their carseats to look for these icebergs.

Cape Spear is the Eastern most point in all of North America and a prime location for viewing icebergs. The icebergs we see here in Newfoundland travel here from Greenland via the Labrador current. The common path these icebergs take is often referred to as Iceberg Alley, and we're situated right along Iceberg Alley here in St. John's. There's even a website devoted to tracking the icebergs in the area: http://www.icebergfinder.com/.

When I heard there were icebergs (that's right, icebergs--plural icebergs) to be seen from Cape Spear I decided it was time to load everyone in the car to go forth and take pictures. We drove out to Cape Spear, climbed all the way to the top of the hill to the lighthouse, and there before us was a beautiful, enormous iceberg. Further South there were even more, smaller icebergs. The pictures don't do them justice, but they were amazing. I was filled with awe to be standing at the very edge of the continent, staring at these icebergs from Greenland.

Now, to find a moose.

Why do I bother leaving the house?

What have we been up to today, you ask? I wish I had something exciting to share with you, but like most weekends we haven't amounted to much this weekend. Though, truthfully, we amounted to more than we do during a lot of our weekends.

We find it really challenging here finding things to do during the weekend with the kids. We've finally freed ourselves from Brandon's morning nap only to find that he'll fall asleep in the car if we attempt to do anything, therefore screwing the afternoon nap. Kyle and Natalie have entered a particularly amusing phase where they each torment each other incessantly from the safety of their carseats in the third row of the TrailBlazer. This means we can hear them squealing at, screaming at, and taunting each other, but we can't reach them to effectively threaten them. Any time we go somewhere Kyle complains the entire time that he wants to go home, and when we finally leave Natalie throws a fit because she doesn't want to go home. Brandon keeps his opinions to himself, therefore reinforcing his position of Favorite Child.

All of the above doesn't surprise me, and it wouldn't really even daunt me if I hadn't had to spend 20 minutes trying to talk the kids into leaving the house instead of watching Toopy & Binoo, only to give up and let them watch Toopy & Binoo before we could leave the house in the first place. And then we spent 10 minutes bundling everyone up into their winter coats and shoes because 42F might be warm by our recent standards, but when we're standing outside in the wind it feels fairly Arctic.

Add to this the fact that there are very few entertainment options in a city the size of St. John's when it's cold, snow is covering every surface--including sidewalks, and I'm not an 'outdoor person', and you see why it might be easier to just stay home.

I heard a rumor this morning that the pack ice was visible from Signal Hill, so we loaded the kids into the car and drove up there, and the view really was beautiful. (I had to look up 'pack ice' on Wikipedia first, and in case you're as clueless as I was here's what they say about pack ice: Drift ice is ice that floats on the surface of the water in cold regions, as opposed to fast ice, which is attached to a shore. Usually drift ice is carried along by winds and sea currents, hence its name, "drift ice". When the drift ice is driven together into a large single mass, it is called pack ice.) Beautiful enough to even make all the coats and arguing worth the trouble. The sun was shining, the wind wasn't quite gale-force, and the ocean was endless. The amount of ice was impressive. But I'm really looking forward to summer and warmer weather so that when the kids are complaining the cold can't be one more thing they're complaining about and at least the 10 minutes of coat-layering can be removed from our pre-outing ordeal.

Someone can't take a joke...

I still wouldn't call what we had yesterday a 'storm' since there was very little wind, and visibility seemed to be decent most of the day--I wouldn't really know since we didn't leave the house at all--but we did get about foot of snow! It was snowing when we got up yesterday morning, and it was still snowing when we went to bed last night. There was just a gentle, constant snowfall all day long. I think it ended up being the second greatest amount of snowfall we've had at one time this winter.

We spent the day watching television, playing Wii, reading, and just generally hanging out together. It was a really nice snow day. And it made me very glad that I braved the crowds at the grocery store on Friday night just so that I wouldn't have to leave the house during the day yesterday. Our snow day wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable without food. The kids and I even made cookies in the afternoon, and then I made a big pot of potato soup for dinner.

I'm hoping this was our last legitimate snow day of the season. Now that Sheila's had her way with us I'm ready for Spring! Who knew Sheila couldn't take a joke?!

ETA: Here are a few pictures. Note that this is one storm's worth of accumulation--all the snow from previous storms had melted away before yesterday's snow.

A snow day for Daddy

Yesterday we had our first legitimate 'storm' of the winter here in St. John's. Apparently we've had a really mild winter so far, and it's never February before you see the first big storm. Yesterday wasn't too bad as far as storms go, but it was nice to finally have a snow day where the whole family gets to hang out all day.

Kyle's school was closed for the day, and Shaun's office was closed for the day. It was my third snow day with the kids, but it was Shaun's first snow day of the winter. Luckily, Shaun had anticipated this occurrence, so he whipped out his laptop and his Blackberry (which I refer to, affectionately of course, as his 'Crackberry') and got to work from the comfort of the couch and his jammies.

Kyle declared it a 'Wii day.' Somehow 'snow day' had become synonymous with 'Wii day' here, but I don't mind.

I think we ended up getting about 8 inches of snow here at our house, though it's hard to tell with the wind blowing and causing the snow to drift everywhere. And the wind was crazy last night.

Here are a couple of pictures. It's hard to get a decent picture without going out into the snow myself--which doesn't happen often--but you can tell it's a lot of snow anyway. I can't tell you how happy I am that the snow decided to get out of the way now instead of hitting this weekend. And I can't tell you how glad I am to be heading out of this mess to sunny Florida in a couple of days!

Front yard

Driveway

The Mother of All Snowplows

Sliding fun

That's right, it's called 'sliding' and not 'sledding' here in Newfoundland. I think we're going to have to call it sledding since it's almost impossible to overcome a lifelong habit. Anyway, we got about 5 inches of snow late yesterday evening, and then another 2 inches or so overnight. It's the single greatest amount of accumulation we've had so far this winter. The kids have never been sledding before today, and I really think Kyle and Natalie enjoyed it. Brandon--not so much. We have no backyard to speak of, but we have friends who live outside of town, and they have an awesome yard with an even more awesome sledding hill right smack in the middle of it. They invited us over this afternoon to do some sledding, and we had a great time. Here are a couple of pictures. The rest of them are on our Shutterfly site if you want to check them out.

Shaun and Kyle sledding

Ryleigh and Natalie sledding

Shaun and Natalie posing after their ride

Brandon watching the fun

The view from the hill

Snow angels

Current weather: 48F, Rainy and windy

You wouldn't believe it if you looked outside right now, but we had legitimate snowfall this morning. I left the house at 8:15 this morning to hit the grocery store and it had barely started to flurry, and by the time I walked out of the store at 8:45 there was a good inch of snow everywhere. We weren't expecting snow today! Over the course of about 4 hours we probably got about 3 inches of snow. The kids and I went to a Christmas party, and the roads were actually starting to get a little nasty. When we got home Kyle and Natalie decided it was absolutely imperative that they go in the backyard to play in the snow, so we broke out the snowpants, and I sent them outside with their daddy. Kyle ended up being very annoyed by how cold it was outside until Shaun made him a little snowman. Natalie just kept exclaiming how much she loved the cold and the snow. The girl was half frozen when it was time to come inside, but she didn't care because she had finally gotten to make her snow angel! She also had quite the fun time throwing snowballs at the windows. By late this afternoon the snow had turned to rain, and all of the snow in the yard is now washed away, but we enjoyed it while we had it!

Our first bit of accumulation

Current Weather: 30F, Partly Cloudy

Imagine our surprise as we walked down the stairs this morning and spotted a layer of white, fluffy stuff covering the lawn and vehicles. As I sit here looking out my office window I'd guess there's about a 1/2-inch of snow out there. Not enough to totally cover the grass and not enough to stick to the streets, but enough to count as our first bit of accumulation. Now the kids are impressed! They don't entirely understand why we can't go outside RIGHT NOW and build a snowman. I'm sure they'll be experts by the end of the winter, but as of now they don't realize there's not nearly enough snow out there for a snowman. And I don't think they realize how COLD it is out there, either. But I think I'm going to let them wear their snow boots when we take Kyle to school in a little while. That should satisfy them.