Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Enjoying God's Creation January and February 2011

This has been a winter to remember!  I think that's true many places across the United States, and it's certainly true in our little part of the Midwest.  We've had a LOT of snow, far more than we typically get here.  These first couple of photos are from January, the rest from February.
A gloomy day, but the snow still made a pretty picture out the back door of the snow.  Note how much accumulated on the rail. 
We spontaneously made some maple candy with our snow.  I have more photos of that, but upon looking at them after the fact, we decided the candy wasn't the most appetizing-looking.  It sure tasted good, though!

Now, to February.  We got a different sort of storm very early in the month.  There was a lot of wind which made for huge drifts because it was also a large snow.  It ended up accumulating quite high between our back screen and glass doors, looking something like layered sand.

Note that almost none accumulated on the rail this time, on account of the wind.

After it had been snowing for some time, we decided to draw lines with a wet-erase marker to mark our estimations of how far up it would get.  The above photo was taken after it stopped snowing.  You can see the lines -- the bottom one is how far up it was when we started our estimating.  The wind ended up shifting, causing the snow to accumulate in a different wave than it had up to the time we marked it, so it didn't follow our lines too well.  I guess Bethany's was the closest.

Here are the four oldest standing behind a large drift.

Can you tell they were more eager to play in the snow than to have a picture taken?

Okay, go!  John took all these.  I was feeling icky in the house, as with the majority of February, due to "morning" sickness (I prefer to call it pregnancy sickness -- mine can be worse in the mornings often, but is not at all confined to that time of day).




On another day, after the snow had been trampled down by much play, the older ones made a snowman.  John took pictures of them in the evening with it, with the help of the flash.



Just a couple weeks later, we had completely different weather.  It was actually around 70 degrees on Zion's 7th birthday, with almost all the snow melted!  The children got to explore the woods some at Grandpa and Grandma's house. 


The children enjoyed the creek, and there was plenty of water in it due to all the melted snow.  It looked pretty, and they even found a mudpuppy in the nearby bank (of which I regret not taking a photo). 

I love this photo!

They're all so busy in their explorations.  Love it.  We also wandered back further into the woods to see some of my old hangout places.  I should have thought to attempt photos there, too.  Maybe another time.  However, natural landmarks have a way of changing dramatically over even just a few years.  I don't think the children were impressed with our old "Fort Longfoot" -- an old tree that was in pretty pathetic condition compared to former days when I used to climb in it.  And the natural tree bridges we used to cross the creek by are long gone.

This one is another of my favorites.  Nobody fell in, although they seemed to like to see how close they could get without falling, ha.

I like how all five children are in this one with Grandpa.

Action shot of Bethany.

Too cute.


And if you'll humor me, I'm going to repost my lone photo from our Great Backyard Bird Count session, which took place the day after the above photos were taken.  It really seems to belong with these others too.

After these things, the weather turned cold and snowy again.  We got another moderate snow accompanied by sleet recently.  While it was still on the ground we got a large thunderstorm, including hail (ours was small, but in some surrounding areas it was much larger).  It was strange to see snow and hail on the deck at once for a little while.  Now the snow has largely melted again, and the temperature today felt more spring-like, though nothing as nice as it was a couple weeks ago, and we still have snow in the forecast.  I'm hoping Spring decides to stick around soon! 





7 comments:

  1. Wow, you did get a lot of snow, but at least it looks warm now -warmer than here!

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  2. It seems like right now there's a struggle between Winter and Spring. Winter is putting up a good fight, but I hope Spring wins soon! :)

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  3. We thoroughly enjoyed this post, although I'm quite ready for Spring myself! :) Easton was sitting on my lap and said "HEY! There's my FRIENDS!!!"
    :D

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  4. I'm rooting heavily for Spring to win out! I really enjoyed all the pictures, especially the ones of everyone out in the woods. I had no idea there was a creek and a bridge out there. Guess we didn't venture outside your room much during our visits to your house!

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  5. I like how you marked the snow with a marker on the glass! The children look like they were having a blast in both cold and warm weather--what a month. :) Thanks for joining us at Nature Connections!

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  6. @ Shonya -- Aw, Easton is so sweet! :)

    @ Kelly -- There's always been a creek but the bridge was a later addition. Dad put it in quite a number of years ago to facilitate getting further back there, but when I was a kid we didn't have it. That's funny that we never went out there when you were there. I guess those church meetings kept us busy!

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  7. @ Sherry -- It really was quite a month. February weather here can often vary, but this year it was pretty extreme. Thanks for stopping by, and I enjoyed Nature Connections.

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