Love Birds

Cristina came from North Carolina to visit for New Years.

Sledding

We went sledding both Saturday and today - it was fairly warm (in the 40s on Saturday and into the 50s today), but we had a lot of snow leftover from the last couple of weeks, so the sledding was perfect.

We went to Clay Central Park on Saturday and Centerville Park on Sunday. These photos are from Sunday (and from my cell phone, so the quality is poor).

Alana didn't want to go on Saturday - she was busy playing dress up, but once we got there, she was totally enthusiastic and it was hard to get her to leave when Caleb was ready to go!

Side note: it rained all afternoon and evening on Sunday and now the snow is almost completely gone!

4 feet so far this year!

I came across this while looking for something else - the Golden Snowball Award website (an annual contest among 5 NY cities). Notice that we're 40 inches ahead of last year and double the average! 52 inches sounds like a lot of snow!

http://goldensnowball.com/2007/02/buffalo-and-rochesters-snow-season.html

Syracuse
This Season - 52.2
Normal Average to Date - 23.9
Normal Seasons Average - 111.9
Last Season This Date - 10.9

This is fun too - the average snowfall rankings for cities with a population over 100,000:

http://www.buffalonian.com/history/articles/1951-now/2001snowstorm/SnowfallinMajorusCities.html

Venn diagram

This is the coolest - Caleb had to make a venn diagram at school to show the similarities and differences between Christmas and Hanukkah.

Alana's school party

I left work early to attend the Xmas party at Alana's daycare center. She got a book called "Snow" (which is perfect b/c she loves snow) and she and her school mates sang Rudolf and Jingle Bells. It was totally adorable, of course. These photos are poor b/c I took them with my cell phone, but at least the cuteness was documented.

Alana makes an entrance

My brother and his wife sent Alana this adorable curtain, called "Make an Entrance," from the catalog HearthSong. Alana loves it and ran off to put on her Tinkerbell costume, the dress up outfit that she thought best coordinated with the curtain. She was a lot happier than she looks in this photo.

TRH Watertown First Annual Holiday Dinner

After having to postpone the TRH NY Region dinner on Sunday in Skaneateles, we were delighted that the weather was fine tonight (though it started snowing on our way home! The dinner at Sacketts Harbor Brewing Company

http://www.1812ale.com/

was very nice and we ate like piggies. And big bonus: though Larry's restaurant was going to pay, Steve Flynn, the owner of the place, picked up our entire tab ($400) - quite a pleasant surprise.

(I looked great that night, but for some reason, took a terrible photo.)

How much snow did we get anyway?

Once again, people from outside the area are asking me how much snow we got in the last protracted (and much ballyhooed) snow storm, but honestly, I'm not absolutely sure - I always hear how much snow we're expecting, but almost never how much we actually got. It's kinda weird. And I've never found a website that reports snowfall, though I've looked several times (and I'm sure there must be one!) Best as I can tell we got 11 inches over the weekend (though I also heard 17, but it doesn't look like that much).

Snow day cooking extravaganza

We were snowed in today, though the weather was not as bad as predicted. I made delicious beef stew and used my bread machine for the first time. The result was good, but a bit disappointing, only because my expectations had be very built up. The machine worked very well - so fast and so easy. I want to try many other recipes. The mix I used, from The Gluten Free Pantry (an excellent company), was a bit boring - I would add some herbs or other flavoring next time.

Gourmet birdfood

Today I made bird food from the recipe of my childhood employer, Miss Foster. She was known in my hometown as "The Bird Lady" - she had extensive backyard feeders and people from the area brought her hurt birds as she was very knowledgeable about helping them. She had developed her interests while bedridden for many months and had turned her interest into a serious vocation. She hired local kids like myself to help with the yard maintenance and we all learned a lot about birds from her. She was a tough old bird herself and quite the curmudgeonly character, but I'll always be really grateful for the experience.

Anyway, the recipe: melt 1 cup bacon fat (or other kitchen drippings) over low heat, stir in 1 cup oatmeal, and then add two cups finely crushed bread crumbs. Serve to birds in a large bowl that won't tip over. Optional: stir in half a cup cracked corn.

Your yard will be full of grateful birds!

Another perfect spelling test

Snow = Slow

You can see in this photo (that I took outside our house in the murky hours of the early morning) that we didn't get much snow, but it came at just the wrong time (in the afternoon yesterday). It took me over an hour to get home last night, which is twice as long as usual. But the weatherman says this is a dusting compared to the "blizzard" expected this weekend (coming across from Texas, of all places) - they're predicting a *foot* of snow on Sunday.

Forecast: SNOW

It's snowing like MAD here - someone said an inch an hour (though this picture taken out my office window doesn't really show how fast it's coming down - they're predicting at least 6 inches, maybe up to 10, by the time it stops tonight). Schools let out early - thank goodness for Matt (he'll be home when Caleb gets there). Not sure I'll stay at work 'til the bitter end - I have to see how things go in the next hour or so. Larry took an overnight bag with him to work - it's not bad up there, but they get a lot of snow in between Watertown and Syracuse - during the last snow storm, they shut down Hwy 81. I hope he gets home, but if not, oh well.

Resident goy makes latkes

This is actually the second time Matt cooked the latkes (but I forgot to get photographic proof the first time). For his dedication he was rewarded by being splattered with oil directly in his right eye about half way through the batch, which obviously cut his ministrations short. (This is our friend's kitchen, not mine.)

Alana's show and tell

For Show and Tell this week at Alana's preschool, she brought a menorah and dreidel and talked about Hanukkah. The daily report form said she did a good job.

Hanukkah gift orgy

We saved up many presents for this, the third night of Hanukkah, b/c it's the first night that Larry was home.

We opened all the presents from Gma Bobbie and Gpa Burt, and Aunt Beth and Uncle Lee, and we opened all our "big presents" - a Wii game system for Caleb and an iPod for Matt.

Alana got a Little Pet Shop play set from Grandma and Grandpa, Daddy got Guitar Hero Encore - Rock the 80s and Mommy got her own personal bread machine so she can bake GF bread at home. Everyone loved their gifts!

The second night of Hanukkah

Finally took some photos of our Hanukkah celebration:

Everyone playing dreidel with Hanukkah gelt (chocolate coins).

Alana and Caleb playing with Hanukkah finger puppets. =>

Caleb with the very patriotic color scheme he picked out for the second night candles.

More snow

It's snowing like mad this afternoon - this is a shot of my building from the outside.

Snow day

We got about a foot of snow between Monday evening and Tuesday! I ended up staying home with the kids, though Matt was home, just b/c the roads were bad and I didn't want to struggle to get to work, with more snow on the way.

The afternoon was nice though. We took Roxy to the park, though didn't stay long as it was COLD - the boys had a snowball fight of course. Then we got some lunch and went to the library and video store.

I made beef stew for dinner (Matt and Larry loved it, but Caleb and Alana, not so much). Then we had our first night of Hanukkah celebration, though of course I forgot to take any photos. It was fun! Yummy latkes, then we lit candles and played dreidel and then opened a few gifts. The kids loved the (cheap!) toys I got for them - knights for Caleb and a little stuffed horse for Alana.

Larry on TV!

Imagine my surprise when watching the snowy weather debacle unfold on the local news channel I happened to catch my husband (!) being interviewed (briefly) for a piece on TRH (and some other Watertown businesses) helping out soldiers at Ft Drum. I kept the channel on and when the story cycled through again I called the kids to watch. They were all THRILLED to see Daddy on TV!

If you go to the site, you can read the text of the story, or you can click on a link and watch the clip (it's maybe 1 minute):

http://news10now.com/content/all_news/watertownnorth_country/?rID=128566&SecID=90

This is the email Larry got from his boss, Jerry:

We have another TV star – Larry @ Team Watertown.
Great community message- click on the link below!

Businesses helping wounded soldiers
News 10 Now - Syracuse, NY, USA

Snowy Monday

Very little snow so far today - this is the view out my office window. No affect on the local schools this morning - it was icy, but nothing too treacherous. It's snowing now (you can't really tell in the photo), but we're not expecting much accumulation today. Now tonight, that's another story - they're calling for 5 - 8 inches! We'll see what it's like in tomorrow morning.

Hanukkah program

This is Alana (in the dark dress), dancing like a dreidel, at the synagogue toddler program this morning.

Guitar Hero

Matt and Larry split the cost of this hot new video game, and everyone has gotten into the action. Here's Caleb jamming out to Ghost in the Machine.