Snow Rollers

Being the weather nerd that I am, I thought it would be fun to show you the rare weather phenomenon northeast Ohioans woke up to yesterday! [In addition to waking up to ANOTHER DAY OFF SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]  They are soooo amazing but are sporadic in nature.  One field will have them, the next one over will not.

I had seen photos of these on weather channel before but never in real life.  They are basically snow balls made by high winds. Takes the perfect combination of wind, temps, and snow type.  I finally found one that was hollow in the middle by my school.

the creek was steaming. it was -22 this morning!  

my favorite!

stroller tracks.  we made the super smart decision to walk to a friend's house through giant snow drifts.  brrrrr.

yep; that's the school i teach at.   HAHA! KIDDING!  my great great grandpa attended this one room school house though!

snow rollers as far as the eye can see!

3.5

On January 18th, Blaine turned 3 and 1/2!  He has morphed into 100% BOY this past half year. To the point where he won't even say "girl".  We have a book where one page is "girl" and one page is "boy" and he literally won't even say the word girl when asked to.    He also tells me that "boys know everything and girls don't know very much" and therefore I don't know very much since I am a girl.  WOA. Didn't think that would start until the teenage years.  GAH!  I am working on him. Not getting anywhere very fast though, ha!

Blaine dresses in head to toe camo just about every single day. I finally got him to wear a winter coat instead of a light jacket but it took purchasing a camo one.  Always boots,  never shoes, and the kid will never EVER wear socks.  Picky about clothes like his mommy was!

He's still a little outdoorsman and likes to help dadda do everything that he probably shouldn't be helping him do.  On the roof at night?  Sure!  Mom cringes in dismay.

As much BOY as he is though, Blaine is a little softie.  He will pretend he is a kitty [complete with purring and crawling] for hours on end.  The kitty "gets in my belly" and then is "born" and I have to name him.  SO FUNNY!  His imagination is crazy wild.

The other day Blaine told me that he can't go to school because he has three jobs and has to work.  He also has a boss, three "uncle bapas", and a tractor store.  He will tell you about them all!  [all fictional!]

I LOVE MY LITTLE BABY CAKES SO MUCH!

Talking with the Dead

It is no secret that I believe in ghosts / angels.   Everyone I talk with thinks I'm nuts but then they follow it up with EXTREMELY, SUPER, VERY FREAKY stories of things that have happened to them!   I'm talking better stories than I could imagine!  Lights being turned on, objects flying around, curtains opening themselves, etc.   Nothing tooooo freaky has happened to me in the last 6 months but I have had a few dreams that I sort to do believe to be more than just my "subconscious" playing tricks on me.

When I have a dream that there is someone deceased in, I know they are dead in the dream.  I proceed to ask them tons of questions.  Where are you now?  What is dying like?  To name a few.   One time a friend who had died told me, "Dying is like falling asleep with a teddy bear in the candle light".  The dream was about 12 years ago and I remember it word for word for obvious reasons.  Chills you to the bone at the same time it warms your heart.

This past fall I had a dream of a friend of my grandparents' who I knew through them but also through school (he was a bus driver).  He died last spring and then showed up in my dream last fall.  He was much much younger, chatted with me, I asked him questions, and then VERY CHILLINGLY told me, "We'll be seeing you soon, Christy" and raised his eyebrows.  I have read books on near death experiences and almost all of them mention time being a different entity in heaven than it is on earth [a minute here is not a minute there, etc].  I PRAY "SOON" IN HIS MIND IS ACTUALLY LIKE 50 YEARS OR MORE!

Lastly, my grandma was in my dream last night.  He was much younger as well, although not as young as his friend had been, and for the first time, wouldn't answer some of my questions.  He told me some things just had to stay secret.

Do you believe in angels doing things in your life and / or coming to you in dreams?  Or as my coworker thinks:  Do things like this only happen to me because I believe in it?

Like a Gift from the Heavens

Now that I'm too old to believe in Santa, magical happiness is hard to come by.  There is still one thing in life that bringing happiness so magically, so unexpectedly, and in such a cheap, innocent way:

A SNOW DAY!

I can NEVER remember our school calling off TWO DAYS of school at one bang.  Two days right after Christmas break at that!  When you get the news you have a snow day it is just like going out to the living room on Christmas morning back when you were 4.  Unbelieveable!  So exciting!  Incomparable happiness!

I told Blaine that it was a snow day and snowdays mean I kiss him all day long everyday.   Lots of hanging out doing nothing going on here these 2 days!

Photo from last month.  Less snow and more cold this time around!

Get Yeti to Run

I did a race on December 14th that a friend told me about at a local park.  It was a trail run 5K with 10 "camp style" obstacles along the way.  The race was put on by a YMCA in conjunction with a camp that is an off shoot of the Y.  The run was called Get Yeti to Run and a participant even did the whole thing in a head to toe Yeti costume!  Crazy!  Temps were about 22 degrees and there was about 3 inches of fresh fluffy snow on the ground.  It was a very small race [less than 30 people] and I said, "why didn't you guys advertise this more?"  They said it was their first year so they wanted to keep it small.  I raced it full out not realizing they they weren't even timing the thing or giving results at the end.  I ended up third overall, first female.  The obstacles were fun and got harder towards the end when you were tired.  We took a wrong turn and ended up going more than 5K.  The ending was an awesome tarp slide into poofy snow!

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my fan club was freezing their buns off!

pretty day in the woods!

2nd to last obstacle.  I don't know if anyone made it succesfuly over that one!

13 year old smoked. me. I told him to sign up for cross country! :)

Slide to the finish!

Frosty Frolic

I heard about this race from a colleague.  It is run in the dark through a park with extensive Christmas lighting displays.  Hard to say  no to that!    I haven't run a 5K in 10 years so I figured it would be a guaranteed PR.  Until race day arrived.  There was a Winter Weather Advisory calling for 3-6 inches of snow, turning to rain towards evening.  I was definitely questioning whether it was even a good idea to venture out of my house!    It was a winter frolic indeed!  I ended up having fun, placing 14th female out of 613 for 2nd in my age group.   Pretty exciting!  The race was cut short due to icy roads and it was 2.7 miles instead of the full 5K.  My time was 20:31.   So I can calculate out what my 5K would have been or just call it a wash and try another one again sometime this spring. ;)

Mole Soup

From reading other blogs, I can conclude that three is officially the age of ENORMOUS imagination.  Blaine has fictional uncle bapas, fictional work, a fictional boss, a fictional monster truck, and the list continues from there.  For some reason he has been obsessed with moles for the last year and yesterday took the cake when he made mole soup!

After his gymnastics class in the evening, his teacher asked me what we had eaten for supper. I was thinking "uh oh, was he hyper or misbehaving?" So when I answered, "we haven't had supper yet, why," she said, "he told me that he had mole soup!"

Here is the recipe and Blaine at work making it!

Mole soup 

1 cup water
1 and three tablespoons lentils 
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon 
1 tsp apple moles (fruit fresh
Stir it
1 squirt honey
3 tsp little moles(quinoa)
Stir it (those are yummy moles)
1/2 cup big moles (large tapioca
1 tsp corn flour
1 tsp water
1.5 whole coffee beans
Sprinkle salt
Mix it up
1 tsp kelp
And mix it up
2/3 cup water
Fresh cround nutmeg
1/8 tsp wasabi powder
3 and 3 real moles (buckwheat flour) " taste so yummy" "olivia might like it its gonna be taste so yummy"
1/8 tsp sea salt
And now you cook it