I may be regretting our current lack of heat this evening.

It is supposed to go down to a crisp 42 degrees this evening. I left all of our windows open a crack all day. Currently, the house is a bit chilly. I have dropped an extra heavy blanket onto my slumbering child. I'm curled under a fleece blanket while sitting on the couch and have a pillow and my sleeping bag on standby. You see, Hubs took my allergy meds yesterday, and he was unable to sleep last night. Hubs is not one to go without sleep well, he came home from work and went right to sleep. I cannot have him give the furnace a once-over before starting it and it will have that yucky burn-off smell. I don't want to do that with two people asleep and keeping the windows closed.

It's going to be a hair chilly here in the land of Bailey's Leaf. I have a candle burning, but I don't think it can generate enough heat. It's a little to early to start cooking up my pot of mulling spices. It's all good. A little chill in the air won't kill us. I may have to chip myself off the couch in the morning, though.

We flew through the air with the greatest of ease.

K- and I were toodling through the church parking lot. We were hand-in-hand. We were talking about what she learned in Sunday School and church. Then K- began to slide a bit. The clipper came through last night, laid down some freezing rain, then some snow. The parking lot was a sheet of ice. I had a pretty good grasp of her hand anyhow and tried to correct her falling by raising her arm. That only threw me off balance (since I was only wearing my snow-sensible Birkenstocks) and I went down. Hubs was a few paces behind us. All he could do was laugh. We both landed on our behinds in the church parking lot with the cars driving around us. I sat there for a few minutes, trying to get K- up and turned around. By the time I got up, I turned around and saw a group of people looking at me. All I could yell was, "It's just a little slick out here!"

Before we went to Sam's, we stopped by home. I needed to change my pants. They were soaked all the way through and I was freezing.

I sit here tonight stiffening with each word that I type. My lower back is a little swollen and I'm aching from the bounce. I've taken a few Advil and would love to sleep under a rockin' hot electric blanket, but that will only cause me to jitter and be dizzy in the AM. (This I found as a side effect to taking the Lipitor.) Know that I'm sure that tomorrow will bring even more aches and stiffness. It could have been far worse.

Here's a public service announcement-- Birkenstocks are not all weather footwear. Well, unless they are designed for that and mine were not. Come to think about it, funny thing is that I slipped and fell on the back steps a couple of months ago on the ice in the same darned shoes!

These would be the shoes, only in gray. Way comfy. Not snow friendly. Ugh.

A Date With My Daughter

Hubs had a work field trip to The Wilds and had to be up and out yesterday morning at the bright and early time of 5 AM. His alarm went off at 4:30 AM, as well as my cell alarm to make certain that he did get up. I talked him into snuggling back to warm up, after going to start the cars when the warmish winter air was all of -2 F. After he got out and on his way, I ended up sleeping until 8 AM. Yikes! I never sleep in that late! K-? She was still sleeping, too! Lack of light in the winter will do that to us. So, I went and got her moving and snuggled her up into bed with me. We hung out, talked and she watched some cartoons on our TV while I checked e-mail.

We ended up putter-putzing around in the morning. My sister called in need of some therapeutic listening. K- played with her Polly's and Legos. We finally got moving in the outdoors way when the temperature hit a balmy 11 F. We were on a mission to go get Star Wars party stuff for Hubs' birthday next Sunday. K- asks her dad every year what kind of party he wants. This year, he told her Star Wars. We flew by the bank, stopped by the party store, went on to Pat Catan's (needed stretcher bars for my Bloggy Giveaway!) and on to Toys R Us. While we were in the area of so many stores, I decided to scope out the clearances.

Then hunger struck. K- suggested a hamburger. I suggested Panera. She liked my suggestion better. We cruised across the street to the local Panera. We braved the blustery winter winds to make it across the parking lot. Apparently, Panera was the place to be. The place was packed! K- wanted her usual-- "A cheese bagel, please." "Sliced or toasted?" "No, straight up!" I decided to get the You Pick Two. I knew that I would get a sandwich (Chicken Caesar) and some soup (Baked Potato.) Then K- and I hunkered down in a booth and got to business. We put my soup between us and went to town. We're dipping fools, I tell you. We shared that bowl of soup and I couldn't have been happier. She kept hugging me telling me "how kind of you to share your soup with me." I only hope that she knows how thrilled I am to have her to share it with!

Hubs wanted a Game Cube for his birthday. He told me to buy one used at The Exchange (they sell used CD's, games, game consoles . . .), but it wasn't the price he said and the games weren't what he told me. I bailed and bought him a gift card instead.

We went to Target, cruised the clearance aisles (which basically aren't that great yet) and found a few good things to put up for kids for next Christmas. We then went on to Best Buy to buy Windows Live Care One. Ours is due to expire on Friday and we needed to re-up. (I love it, by the way.) I hate that store. It is like sending a man to the Clinique counter. Seriously, I walked in circles with K- hanging onto my pocket (so I knew where she was at) hunting. I finally gave up, asked a gentleman who was helping someone if he could tell me where it was at. He handed it to me and of course, it wasn't on sale like my neighbor told me it would be. I expected about $25.00. It was $49.99. In the end, Hubs ended up finding it at Walmart for $29.99. Still, it is not my area of expertise. I knew it. I should have just handed the money to Hubs or the neighbor and asked one of them to make it happen, please.

So my daughter-darling is having some good quality daddy time right now. They are enjoying Star Wars, The Clone Wars movie right now. Never mind that she watched it with her friends just this past Thursday. Nah, to watch it with daddy is a whole different thing. They snuggle up on the couch and talk all Chewy with each other. Hubs is glad to have someone to talk Chewy with. It's like my bowl of soup. Something awesome to share with our fun little girl.

It's a Hair Chilly Up Here

If it's a hair too cold outside, you can always make a snowfoam man inside.Surely I must be kidding about the cold, eh? Um, no. Just check out that temperature! All the schools had been closed and Little Gym for K- was even cancelled!
Oh look, I'm not proficient with the whole screen shot thing, but I did get a picture of my monitor. It says it's cold. The red part? We live there, as well as Janeen at My Story and Natalie at The Cybyk Times. It could be colder. We could be in Milwaukee like friends of ours or in Minneapolis, like the daughter of our church secretary. It was -13 F there the other day. Ugh.

When Hubs and I met, it was -25 F. The university we attended was THE ONLY place open. Our University President thought there would be a heat wave at noon. There wasn't. I remember the -25 F. Add a wind chill on top of that. If memory serves, it felt like -47 F. That isn't so toasty. (BTW, that was January 1994.)
It is so cold right now that we have ice forming on the inside of our windows. Grant you, this is the wind side of our house. The front of our house always gets hammered by weather.
Our windows aren't old. When it gets this cold, there is only so much windows can do.

But look! Stinky is being kept safe in the Polly Pocket house.
Don't worry. Jabba is close behind to make certain that his little pumpkin muffin is kept safe in the land of Polly's and their many tiny, rubbery clothes.

Eating Snow: Is it Safe?

(K- making a snow angel in our front yard after the March 2008 snowstorm.)

This post all began with a twitter post (or whatever you call them because I'm so not that cool) that was talking about Snowscream. I thought, HOW GROSS! Then, I started to research. You know what? I found completely conflicting information.

WGN out of Chicago gave us this information. They say that snow is bad. Eating snow is really, really bad. But, then they are in the city, near airports, and heaven only knows what is swirling through the air.

Dick Goddard, local weather guru at Fox 8 Cleveland, says that snow is "nature's vacuum cleaner." Personally, what Dick Goddard says makes sense to me. He says that as the snow falls, it cleans the air of particulate matter floating around. If you have crub in the air and acid rain as we do in the only pristine air of NE Ohio, I don't know if you'll be wanting to dine on snow anytime soon. He claims that in the winters, he used to make ice cream with snow with his daughter. A few years or so ago, they ended up very ill from their snow ice cream. He swears that he won't do it again. He always has a bit on the weather every year cautioning folks NOT to make ice cream with snow.

I kept on reading and found at Eco Child's Play their thoughts. Basically, licking snow off of gloves is okay, but making an entire meal of it is probably not the best idea.

At Safety Issues, they've been told that there is not much need for worry and their are no clinical reports about children getting ill from eating snow.

So, are you grossed out by eating snow? I mean, I'm sure it is more a location thing. Still, K- likes to stick her tongue out and collect flakes, but I don't know that I want her making a lunchtime snack out of the white stuff. So as we are under an official Winter Storm Warning until Sunday at 1 AM we'll be making snowmen, but no snowscream.

Shiver me Trick or Treatin'

It's been a little chilly in Ohio. In all fairness, I understand it is Ohio. I understand that winter is coming. In fact, I welcome it. I love warm sweaters, crunchy leaves, warm green tea with lemon or hot chocolate (ick to coffee.) I have to say, it was a might chilly for a trip to the pumpkin patch this morning. Look:
Yes, that is my car thermometer from yesterday morning. A little brisk, eh? I say Amen to that! So, we shuttled off to the pumpkin patch, kind of grumbling since this was scheduled two weeks ago and it was postponed due to a light mist falling from heaven. At least it was warmer then. It didn't require the fleece lining of the coats to be zipped back in, heavy sweaters, turtlenecks, hats and gloves.

The pumpkin patch was really quite lovely. They did a great job of teaching the kids about what they do there and different uses for the products that they grow. They grow corn, soy and pumpkins. They gave each child a bag, so as they went through the process of teaching them about their farm, they gave them a variety of things to place into their bag. They were sent off with soybeans to plant, a coloring book printed with soy ink, soy crayons, soynuts with a candy shell (the soy version of M & M's and they are rather tasty!), then as we walked, they allowed the children to pull a dried ear of corn from a stalk to take home with them to feed the critters. (Ours was VERY frosty!) In the end, they took us out to a very slippery pumpkin patch to pick a little guy of our own to take. When we got home, guess what we did?

We carved pumpkins! (Surprise, surprise!)

I carved the big one with templates of Cinderella and the castle. (Those can be found at the Huggies website.) K- decided that she wanted to carve her own pumpkin, so I allowed her to wield the safe pumpkin carving knife. She had a great time! After she was done, she went to the backyard to play a bit and look at what she found:

That would be a whiffle ball with a lot of ice around it. We're not talking the little fragile delicate ice. Ice thick enough for a 4 year old to play with it mid afternoon and still remain fully intact. Trick or treating tonight at my parents house will be a little chilly. Good thing we scored a big fuzzy bee costume! Nice and toasty. The right price, too! I got it at the thrift store for a whopping $5.00. My friend lengthened it a little and we're good to go. Lookie here here at the Hubs and K- trick or treating this past Sunday:

I know it's a little dark, but it was trick or treat and I did the best I could!

While I'm bugging you with far too many photos today, allow me to give you a glimpse of the little guy who has been living here for a while. I call him Buddy.

He's missing one big ole back leggin'. We're thinking that a bird tried to snack on him. It was great to see him around today. In fact, K- and I were surprised that he was still up and around. We thought he had gone by way of Grasshopperscicle a while ago.

Have a fun time trick or treating! Save the Heath bars for me!