The Longest Winter Ever

This winter lasted forever.  It was unbelievably cold in January.  I suspected that the house, being a zillion years old, would be cold, but it was super freezing.  I think it was mostly from drafts coming up from the floor.  The previous owner warned me and I think it would have been OK if it had just not been so cold for so long.  We're talking months below freezing and even weeks in the single digits. I also have problems maintaining my temperature when I'm pregnant.

Because of some weird storms at the beginning of winter everyone had amazingly long icicles.  We had several that were well over 4 or 5 feet.  It was a good time for the kids seeing how long the icicles could get and we'd break them down and have a good time.

The worst part the whole winter was when we all got the flu at the same time.  It was a terrible week.  Jared and I were so sick that it was a huge struggle for us to make food, distribute medicines, or do any of our normal tasks.

At the same time it was almost better that we had it all at the same time rather than spacing out over weeks and weeks.

We went through several bottles of ibuprofen.

Lily got it first and was the sickest.  It was pretty pathetic.  After days of restless sleep, sweating and laying her hair turned into a giant dread lock.

One day Annie disappeared.  I couldn't find her anywhere and I started to panic.  After a few minutes of searching and calling I finally found her between the wall and Jared's side of the bed, tucked half way under and sound asleep.  She was so sick and it was so sad and so cute.

Once we were all somewhat better, we needed to get out of the house after being locked in for over a week.  We went to a model train show.

There were some good times had.  Here's Annie and Jack in the snow with cousin Cate during a heavy snow storm.

We built a snowman in the backyard.  Jack wanted the snowman to wear his bike helmet, but when it didn't fit, he decided to wear it instead.  Then I took some pictures, and Wacky Jack always has to do some ridiculous pose.  I had to put a few of these on the blog, because they are going to embarrass him some day and I love it.  There were about 20 of these, I was crying when I first saw them.

Speaking of Wacky's poses, here is his old school rapper pose after climbing up a rock wall at a playground.

Once the snow melted somewhat and it wasn't completely freezing, we started trying out Springville's various playgrounds.

Our time inside wasn't always terrible, either.  Jack's been building a lot of forts.

Here I am at my usual station; cooking, cleaning, making unicorn horns, etc, all while gazing out the window at the backyard and my chickens.

The poor chickens were stuck in their little covered chicken run for months.  It was a constant struggle to make sure their water wasn't frozen and they weren't frozen either.  They're all winter hardy breeds, but Jared is always concerned about them and wanted to make sure they were happy chickens.  We had a heat lamp set up for them, which was always a fiasco.  On the first night we used it, it was too low and two of the chickens got some of their back feathers burned off.  The worst was one night when Jared got a higher wattage bulb for it and put it in a place where he thought it would be safe.  Before we went to bed he went out to check on them and arrived just in time.  The coop had caught fire!  It was in the nest box which is full of pine shavings and there was about a 6" flame and the coop was full of smoke.  The dumb chickens were still just sitting up on their roost.  Jared put the fire out and everything was ok, he'd saved the day (although he was the one who caused it, too.)  

We do love to take care of our animal friends, though.  We made bird balls and hung them in our trees.  They were happy.

We grew grass for our cats.  It's good for their digestive systems and they love it.

Other random stuff, Annie likes to put stuff down her shirt (or mine) and say "pocket".  She did this with her choo choo, and we found it at the bottom of her footie pajamas a couple hours later.

Annie eating an ice cream samich in her car seat.  Everything had to get washed, including the seat.

On St Patrick's day.  Could she be any cuter?

January is always by far the worst month of the year, but even February and March were difficult this year.  Anywho, spring has finally arrived and I could not be happier.