We're swimming in snow! We've had like 10" of snow already. It's great! I love winter with lots of snow on the ground...it just makes winter bearable. In the afternoons after we've finished school work the kids and I go outside. I get my cardio exercise shoveling snow and they have loads of fun sledding down our hill. I'll get pics soon (promise). Our neighbor usually plows us out right away, but he didn't get to us too quickly this year. That's okay it was incredibly nice that he did this in the past and we were not expecting it at all. Tom shoveled first and was able to get his car out to drive to work. He hasn't been biking because with his new schedule he has to be at work at 6am and just hasn't gotten in the groove of things to leave at 5:15am to ride to work. It's also very dark at 5:15am and dark at 4:30pm when he gets done with work...not exactly fun when you're on a bike in sub zero temps. Each afternoon I spend about 1-2 hours just shoveling snow trying to get a solid path for my car. We've parked all our cars at the end of the driveway near the road, so we won't have far to drive to get out. We had a harsh comeback from our trip down south. The temps are bitter cold here. Sub zero in the morning and then warming up to a balmy 10 or 15F. It's funny because after you experience those daily temps when you finally get a 30+F day you truly feel like you're experiencing a massive heat wave. If it's sunny you feel sweaty and the need to take your jacket off and it's only 33F! Crazy :-)...can't wait to feel those 30+F days again.
At the end of October I drove my Mom back to Indiana after she had helped me with the kids for 2 weeks while I could go be a slave a my job. The weather was still nice there when we went, so we decided to take a trip to the Indiana Zoo...this is a meercat that we saw at the zoo:
Here's Dad with the boys in front of the bears totem:
They have some really neat elephants there:
New this year was a shark petting tank:
They also have an impressive dolphin exhibit. It's a bittersweet exhibit for me. I love to see dolphins, but it's sad to see them in Indiana with no ocean around. It's hard to tell, but it looks like they don't get any natural sunlight in there. That really makes my stomach turn. A couple of the dolphins they have were born in captivity, so at least they don't know what they're missing.
Reeve told me they looked happy and that they were well cared for. That's it for now...stay warm everyone :-)
