Winter Is Definitely Here

Church skip today! And not because we felt like playing Bedside Baptist. Got a call this morning that church was cancelled - apparently we had some pretty nasty freezing rain last night, to the tune of 400 accidents reported already.

So we're playing it safe, and the upside is a few hours to put on a pot of coffee, eat cookies for breakfast (mmm - I made molasses crinkles again yesterday), and catch up on some computer time.

(Heh - The Husband's response to hearing "church is cancelled"? "Aww, and I just put my winter tires on yesterday." He put my winter tires on my car last week for an extra birthday treat, so I suppose in theory with two Canadian drivers behind the wheels of two winter-tired Jettas, we could probably ferry everyone to church....)

At least we know all of the church people have food to eat. Today was supposed to be our harvest potluck. I'm in good shape - we'll definitely enjoy our Sweet and Sour Bean Hot Pot for lunch. Others aren't so lucky; I called the next person on the calling tree to tell her not to head out and she said they now have to figure out what to do with five pounds of potato salad.

(Which to me is pretty much a no-brainer - grab a book and a spoon and you're good to go. But I guess not everyone would consider that a nice individual-sized snack.)

This church skip is just another step on the road to re-acclimating to winter. Last Saturday we got dumped on with about 12 inches in 24 hours. The kids were in their glory:

It was perfect snow - big, wet, heavy flakes, just right to make several forts in the front yard and a snow family in the back. The Husband was on "throw snowballs at us, Dad!" duty, so he trudged out every hour or so to pelt them for a few minutes.

Of course, winter to me equals one thing: it's reading season! Which is different from fall, spring, and summer only in the types of books I choose, I guess. This year, I've drafted some other codex consumers:


I have to say that I love the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. I haven't actually read them myself, but they've been the perfect transition from picture books to chapter books for The Boy. Plus, they're hilarious - fart jokes and booger jokes and more stinkiness than you can roll your eyes at. He sits there giggling away. They were both so excited when I brought the latest volume home that they read it to each other in two hours flat.

They polished that one off so quickly that we're scrambling for something to fill its place. Fortunately The Boy is quite enamoured with Magic Treehouse right now (and, since "at least he's reading," I'll close my eyes to the sentence fragments and keep my "how do they expect to teach kids to read using improper grammar like that" mutterings to myself), so methinks we'll put those winter tires through their paces and hit the library this afternoon.

Hope the workers were able to get there.