Brrr.

Well, it's still winter here.  We had a few warm days where it got into the 50s, but for the most part it's been miserable and cold.

This past weekend we made national news for cold temperatures.  The high on Saturday was -11 and when I woke up on Sunday, it was -20.  I bundled up to go outside  and snow blow, but then stayed in for most of the weekend.

When Brian deployed to Afghanistan a few years ago, he bought a faux "mink" blanket.  He grabbed the first one off the shelf and didn't realize it was a Winnie the Pooh blanket.  Not only that, but it is the creepiest Pooh Bear blanket you will ever see complete with floating half-finished heads.  I doubt that this is an officially licensed Disney product.  Regardless, it is incredibly warm and I spent most of the weekend hiding underneath it.

We have a small studio apartment attached to the back of our garage.  I discovered on Sunday that the pipes in the apartment froze due to the cold temperatures.  After many calls and texts to my dad, I was able to get them thawed yesterday (thanks Dad!).  I had to climb in and out of the crawl space with a hair dryer about a million times...now I know to keep the water dripping when it gets that cold. Hopefully it won't happen again. This is my view sitting on the edge of the crawl space while using the hair dryer to thaw the main shut off valve.  I learned a lot about plumbing this weekend.

The winter weather and early nights make it hard for me to get out much, but I like to think that I am becoming a master chef while Brian is gone.  My parents got me a wok for Christmas and my new absolute favorite thing is to make a stir fry.  It's so easy and delicious and you can pretty much put whatever you want in it.  Yum!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! Diesel, Kitten, and I spent New Year's Eve on the couch watching How I Met Your Mother and reading Harry Potter.  We are not big partiers in this household.

I woke up the other morning to a blanket of snow on the ground.  It was the first real snow of the year.  I have been anxiously dreading using the snow blower, so I thought I could just shovel the driveway, since it was only a few inches.  Wrong! This was the heaviest snow I had ever encountered.  All the neighbors had been using their snow blowers so I decided I had to suck it up and use ours.  We have a fancy snowblower that came with the house as part of the purchase contract.  Here it is:

After I got it started and struggled through a few passes, a kind hearted neighbor heard that it wasn't running quite right and came over to show me how to adjust the choke.  After that, it was much easier.  

I was very proud of my first attempt at snow blowing.  I had to do it again today, and found it much easier this time.  It's so much better than shoveling, but still quite a workout - I ended up with around 5,000 steps afterward each time.

They keep the roads incredibly clear here.  In Colorado, when it snows, it will normally take days to clear all the roads. They don't use salt on the roads and there aren't enough snow plows, and as a result, it's a mess and very dangerous to drive after it snows.  Someone from Colorado needs to come here and learn how it should be done.  It's very impressive how quickly and efficiently they clear the roads.

I am not a big fan of snow, but Diesel Dog loves it.  He thinks it's great fun to chase snow balls and loves it when I kick the snow up so he can catch it in his mouth.  I've been making sure to shovel a path for him on the deck so he can get down into the back yard.  If the snow gets much deeper, he's not going to be able to move around down there!