Our Winter Wonderland.

It's not very often, in our part of the country, that we are shut in our homes for 3 days due to ice/snow/wintry weather. This was not uncommon during our years in Oklahoma, but not in Texas. Just a mere 3 hours south the winters are typically much more mild. But our temperatures drastically dropped on Thursday. And they continued to drop. The sleet started coming down around 3pm and it fell all night long. We woke to an iceskating rink surrounding our home on Friday morning. It was solid ice. And it was beautiful. Isn't wonderful to wake to that? I mean, it looked like snow. So it was still beautiful. And the iceskating rink still remains, 3 full days later. I love it. I've had 3 full days with my family. Jeremy has played with the big boys outside each day: slipping and sliding, sledding, eating icecicles. See video below. Holden and Pax have loved it. All 3 days they watched a Christmas movie, once their little fingers couldn't bear the cold anymore and they finally wanted to come inside. They were wearing gloves, but not waterproof gloves, so they didn't help all that much. We've just had a whole lot of family time. Some sweet, sweet time together that was much needed. Today, all five of us ventured out onto the ice to Target. I just wanted out of the house. So we browsed the store and grabbed some necessities. But other than that, it's just been us inside our house since Thursday afternoon and it's been a really fun time together. A few pictures from our winter wonderland:

 view from our front door

 the backyard

The overgrown mess of our blackberry bushes. Completely iced over.

 I did play a little outside.

Eating icicles. This is one of those childhood memories burned deeply into my brain. I remember my dad stepping up onto the bumper of our car, parked in our driveway, and scraping down icicles into a bowl for us to eat. Funny memory. But I'm glad it's there tucked away. And fun to be on the other side of that and watching my boys enjoy something so simple.

 

Right before they went sledding. Make shift sled: using some rope from the garage and a lid from one of our Christmas storage bins. Hey! It worked! And the boys loved it!

This boy slipped on the ice SEVERAL times. He thought it was fun/funny.

 Jeremy pulling them both on the sled.

 Abe experienced the wintry weather from the view of the window. But he did sport his new fleece snowman jammies to help celebrate in the fun.

One last little indoor project we did this weekend. Creativity via someone else through Pinterest.

Now that's a good daddy. A good daddy that HATES the cold. I mean, HATES the cold. But played outside in the frigid temps for long periods of time. And I think he had just as much fun as his little boys.