my kids are a lot of work!

I envy those people who seem to mainly exist on television. The ones with children who calmly respond to reason. (Mine are practicing to become attorneys.) The ones you tuck into bed and they sweetly kiss you on the cheek. (Mine pull me down and hang there like monkeys from a tree.) The ones with teens who get along chummily with their younger bros. (Mine just toys with them. He's a cat & they're mice.)

Yeah I don't have that kind of child.

In the summer I can send them out to play. Summertime is wonderful. We spend the weekend out on the deck, playing legos, sidewalk chalk. Riding bikes. Oh how I miss you summertime. Warmer weather will be welcomed. I did not mean to alliterate, it just happened.

At the current temps I'm sure someone would call child protective services if I put them out to play. Even bundled up, it's ridiculously cold. I don't even feel like getting out. Today I did go out and take pictures of the trees out in front, the fog or whatever froze to their branches in the morning and it lasted all afternoon. In fact it is still there. I drove through part of campus earlier this evening and the conifers are magical. I wished for my camera but it didn't appear.

Oh wait, that was late yesterday. Ugh. It's past midnight. Okay well here are some pictures.

Mr. C and I went out this afternoon after I heard the blade go by like eighthundredtimes. It was one guy plowing, to my cross-the-street-neighbor's specs. I was impressed, he got it down to the street. I haven't seen the street in weeks. So I was looking out the window at the dude, and saw the beautiful snow encrusted branches of this tree I have in my front yard. Usually it has berries but it seemed to have been transformed by pixie dust. I can't quite capture the way it looked, at least not in the photos. I can't exactly explain what was lost, except for the sparkly quality of everything. And the way we were somewhat blind when we came in. (He noticed it more than I did, and to revive his sight, he attempted a remedy of his own - standing under the range hood and staring into the light above the stove! I thought it was remarkable.) I can't show how smooth the snowbanks are, or where we wrote our names in snow with our fingers, in a bank up to his elbow and my hip. Because the battery died. Oh well. It was not that much time we spent out there. Otherewise we would have frozen our collective asses off. Our butts would have fallen off there on the sidewalk and we'd have to pick them up and put them under our armpits to keep them warm. Yep time to go to bed.