A Snowy Picnic

Ok, first of all, raise your hand if you're able to read this. Er, scratch that. Somebody please let me know if they can read this, because my family members report that the writing on my blog isn't showing up. I can see it like normal, but that's not that helpful to people trying to read.

Anyway...It's a bright day outside and I'm hanging out at the Crowes a bit before going to have tea with Ira next door. She popped in to get her little brother yesterday (he'd been playing with the Crowe boys) and she asked me if I could come over.

I will come over, providing I can get past the huge white dog they have now-- a big, barking, truly abominable snowman. I hope his bark is much, much bigger than his bite, because his bark is pretty darn big. Everytime I walk up here (or anyone else does, for that matter) he makes it his personal responsibility to try to get them to pee their pants. And he's provoked the dog across the street, who was fairly mild before, so that now they seem to be having a competion. Walking down the street is like going down a gauntlet. I just try to mind my own business, keep to a calm pace, and remember that there is an iron bar fence between me and frosty-face.

It was true that the winter was not over-- on Tuesday it started snowing again and 6 or 8 inches came down pretty fast (it was the most I've seen). So on Wednesday, the Gollans invited us to go on a forest picnic. Bruce, Deb, and Rodge were in Kiev, so the younger five and I went down. They built a fire and we roasted hot dogs and the kids sledded on the hill and had snowball fights. Noah sat in a coated, hatted, be-mittened blob near the campfire and ate sticky food with stickier mittens. We visited and enjoyed the novelty of what I never would have dreamed up-- a picnic in the snow in February!

The trees were full of snow, and it kept tumbling down on us. As soon as Priscilla and Sveta laid out a red blanket on the snow to sit on, a load of snow avalanched out of the trees right onto them, covering them and the blanket. So we stood most of the time, but it was great fun. Here are Sveta and Priscilla on the blanket:

And Tucker, Clark, Bronwyn, and Noah, roasting weiners.

Sledding! Brent, Ellie, Angel, Jesse, and Clark...And I'll leave you with a shot from my front doorstep earlier that morning: