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We love you! Have a great day!

>I know, its hard to tell the difference isnt it? Anyhow, we got about 4 or 5 inches of snow yesterday (its hard to believe that the previous 50 had all melted!). Its a very sunny 32 or so today so the snow is perfect packing snow! We started off building a snow fort, but Frankie thought it looked like a “pyramid in egypt” and the rest is history, literally.

The builders at work:

>Bee has been wanting to learn to whistle and I have been trying to teach her how. Maybe she still isnt old enough, but I have been having a hard time explaining how to whistle in a way that makes sense to her. i found these directions but they havent quite helped. any other ideas?

>We went sledding yesterday, and we hadnt gone in a couple of weeks. For the life of us, we could not find the sled. Then finally Frankie spied the corner of it on the desk. So, here is evidence of how much snow that we have gotten in just the last two weeks alone! Our poor sled was covered in about a foot of snow! The sledding was so much fun – and fast – yesterday that we may just go again this morning and take the camera with us! Frankie’s favorite part is going down the big hill with the bumps that send you up in the air! Bee’s favorite part was seeing who could go the farthest! She is really good at steering her sled straight ahead.

>We escaped the big snow and ice storm, which went south of us, and caused Ohio State to close down for the day (scott says, “wimps!” ha ha). I’ve checked the 15 day extended forecast and I banking on the fact that Feb 7th is forecasted to be 42 degrees! Lets hope its true! However, in the mean time, Im so excited that we are now gaining over 2 minutes a day in sun light and by this time next week we will be gaining 2.5 min a day, and the sun will be setting at just about 6pm and rising a good ten minutes before 8am!! Now, all we need is the groundhog to not see his shadow! We have good memories of passing through Punxsutawny, PA, walking by the groundhog museum, and eating some of the best pizza in PA. We even passed by the “Calabrese Garage” in town. We would stop there on our treks between NYC and MI as way to get off the beating path of i-80. We would stay at the “historic” Panthall Hotel, where they even had “pet rooms” where your dogs could stay with their human guests!

Jan 28, 2009 7:56 AM 5:47 PM 9h 50m 10s + 2m 14s
Jan 29, 2009 7:55 AM 5:48 PM 9h 52m 27s + 2m 16s
Jan 30, 2009 7:54 AM 5:49 PM 9h 54m 45s + 2m 18s
Jan 31, 2009 7:53 AM 5:51 PM 9h 57m 05s + 2m 20s
Feb 1, 2009 7:52 AM 5:52 PM 9h 59m 28s + 2m 22s
Feb 2, 2009 7:51 AM 5:53 PM 10h 01m 52s + 2m 24s
Feb 3, 2009 7:50 AM 5:55 PM 10h 04m 17s + 2m 25s

>To celebrate the presidential inauguration we made an Inauguration cake! Frankie called it the best cake ever! ha ha! We made it with a new recipe we found on All Recipes , and used dark chocolate cocoa! yum! We cut the sugar by about 25% and it was still sweet enough. We also cut the whole recipe in half and then used our little camping pans to make small round cakes so we could layer them. I mean, after all, if we had a whole cake we would have to eat the whole thing… Then we made simple butter cream frosting with powered sugar, butter, milk and vanilla. Sprinkles of course! Enjoy a slice!

Oh, Im noticing its -1F. Well, really Im trying not to notice. Calling all ground hogs. Can you call the end of winter please!

>Frankie just gave me this picture she drew of a duck. I thought it was really beautiful so I decided to post it here! And not to be outdone, Bee drew a mermaid and then cut it out!

>the snow keeps coming! We had snow all day saturday and more yesterday evening. We did get up to 25F yesterday so we took the “break” in the weather to play outside. here is Bee standing in our front yard! We wanted to make a snow fort, but the snow is too cold to pack, so Be had a great idea of just digging a hole in the snow and making a snow nest instead! Does that officially make us snow birds?

>Would you be surprised if I said it was snowing today? It is. But it is going up to 16 degrees this afternoon! I just read on the special weather statement on weatherunderground.com that the winter 2009 in Lansing is the snowiest winter (to date) since 1952 and the second snowiest in recorded history. We have 48.5″ of snow already, and we are only 4 weeks into winter, officially!

>Well the weather station is reporting that it is -10 this morning and the windchill is -22. But hey, we are warmed than our neighbors down “south” in jackson where their temp is reported at -13! So, school is closed! Of course MSU is not closed which creates its own set of issues but i think we will have two happy campers when they get up in a little while!