::freezing::

Luckily for us it's not freezing anymore right now--well, at least not the way it was.
The week of my birthday had some crazy weather. My birthday was nice and temperate, but the next day a storm blew in. My parents were flying out that afternoon, and it was truly questionable whether they were going to make it out or not. Lucky for me since Kris was flying out to see his parents that weekend they drove our car down there and parked it in long term parking. It was very nice that I didn't have to drive down and back with the boys, since it was terrible driving conditions and seemed very unsafe.
Max had a two hour delay for school and it was so darn cold I decided to just keep him home so I didn't have to take the baby out in the freezing.

Anyway, they made it luckily--though I think there was some white-knuckle driving in there.
That night it got freezing freezing cold, like well below zero, which is unusual for out here. School was cancelled the next day and we discovered that our pilot light had gone out. We have radiant floor heating and it takes a long time to cool down and a long time to warm up. By the time we realized the furnace wasn't running it was way cold in the house and it took forever and a day to warm up.
We spent a lot of time in the living room by the fire and we dressed Sand really warmly.


Max got out every toy he owned in an effort to entertain himself. He did well, but we were getting pretty tired of the still cold house by the end of the day. We braved the snow that night to go and grab a couple of burgers at a new place with FRY SAUCE!

The next day there was another two hour school delay. I ran into work after I dropped Max off and I got a automated phone call from the school district saying that all the students were warm and safe, but there was a statewide gas shortage and that they were going to close up school as soon as all classes were over. Turned out there was a true shortage and several cities in the state were completely without gas and some without power for days that week! Luckily we were fine. We did close the office friday though, in order to contribute to saving gas for cold homes. School was cancelled too.

It was just a crazy winter week. Kind of fun to have such crazy stuff going on, and lucky that we were warm, but I did feel bad for all the cold people without working heaters. Things like that make us grateful for what we have, and inspire us to make sure we have enough wood to stay warm if we happen to be left with only our fireplace for heat!

Can't wait for spring!

::frigid outing pt 2::

......after we got done freezing at the crazy graffiti for park we hopped back in the car and headed over to check out another area. It was still cold over there.
We parked by one of the oldest lighthouses in the US. Now I can't remember of course--maybe it was the 3rd oldest? Anyway it was cool. And I got a picture of it just as the light flashed at us. Can you see it?

Max spent some time jumping off rocks. That was fine with me because it kept him away from the edge of the land, at least momentarily.

He is such a boy.

And then of course he went over to the edge. Think it was just to bug me? Take a look at the expression on his face.

Stinker.
So as you can see there's the edge of the land and then there's the ocean. In between there were a whole bunch of rocks on a slope. And it was cold and icy. So of course we went down there. Well, the boys went down there first.



It was really pretty.



Some of the rocks were pretty icy. Max did a pretty good job, but he definitely needed some assistance.

Wow, in that picture the ocean almost looks like ice itself. It was so grey.

I wasn't really planning on going down there, but once they got down to the bottom they started calling me. And although neither Grant nor I wanted to go, we did.


I watched my feet very carefully so I wouldn't end up in the ocean.

It was already cold enough. Falling in the ocean really would've bummed me out.

There were some pretty amazing icicles down there. It looked like there were all these little streams flowing down to the water and then suddenly it got super cold and they all just froze.

Kris says that's not what happened though. But it looks like it to me. It was really beautiful.
Melissa took a picture of Kris and I. While we were posing, Max did his best to break through some ice and fall in the water. Chad somehow kept him upright with the hand that wasn't holding Grant. Impressive daddy skills there.

But right after that Max finally succeeded in cracking some ice. (Melissa captured this moment)

See the ice cracking under his feet? Kris's arms are reaching out to grab him....but he did end up dunking both hands in the freezing water. And he got the bottoms of his jeans pretty wet Brrr. And somehow he still cried when we said it was time to go up and leave. I think kids must be made of teflon.
And so then we went home. It was a fun freezing adventure. I think we're going to go back when it's not quite so cold.

::frigid outing pt 1::

On Saturday we went out to have some fun with Chad Melissa and cute little Grant. We grabbed some lunch and then headed out to Jamestown, RI.
There was a park out there with a little hike we wanted to check out. It was freezing freezing.

There were all these little ponds or puddles or something in the grass that were all frozen solid. Well, not as solid as Kris thought. He got out into the middle of the big one (you can see him behind Max in the above photo) and suddenly we all heard this big CRACK. He got off there pretty fast.

Max thought the ice was pretty fun, of course. It was tricky to keep him from going out too far. Somehow he didn't fall on his bum. I'm not sure how we kept that from happening!



It was fun to walk around the edges of the icey spots and crack all the ice.
Sultan was just glad to get out and eat some yummy snow.

And Grant was cool with keeping an eye on everybody from his throne.




There was this old fort in the park. It was really big and really kind of gross and creepy. We looked it up after we got home. Turns out it was a fort used in world wars one and two for monitoring sea traffic in and out of the bay. It's been turned over to the parks and rec dept of the city now, and basically it looks like it's just a big hang out for teenage weirdos. There was nobody in it when we were there though. It was way too cold for just hanging out.
It was cool looking.

Lots of interesting graffiti--luckily most of it was illegible. You know, there comes a point when there's so much graffiti somewhere that it seems organic, like it grew there or something. Like some of the buildings in NYC that you see from up on the subway. Anyway, this place was like that.







After messing around there for a while we went along the path.

The path took us up on top of the thing. I was nervous about Max the entire time of course. I could just see him falling off the cliff you can see behind Melissa and I.

But of course "I WON'T! I'm just following Sultan!" Yeah, good old Sultan won't lead him wrong! (hah!)

But he didn't fall off anything. Luckily. Thanks to lots of yelling from me. At least I like to think the yelling does some good.

Yes, you can see it in his face. He just likes me to yell so he can pretend he doesn't hear it. Little stinker thinks somebody will always be there to catch him if he falls. I guess that's good, right?

And after we got too cold up there and headed back down towards the car he did fall. I guess. He was running ahead and I think he ate it.

And somehow ended up with a handful of big burrs. He's amazing. I don't know how he does it.
After that we tried to take some pictures of our breath, but though it was FREEZING we couldn't see our breath. Explain that one to me...

and then we--oh wait--you're going to have to just stick around for part 2.

::Frozen no More::

We finally made it home, yesterday at about 6PM. Finally. Yesterday was a long day. Not only did we miss our connecting flight on sunday night which meant we were rescheduled for a flight monday at noon, but they also delayed that flight two hours. It was annoying. But luckily Max was safe and sound with friends, so that made things a lot less stressful than they might've been otherwise.
We were actually happy about the delay because we got to see Lisa (Kris's cousin). It was so fun to see her. She came and picked us up and took us to breakfast. It was so nice to spend some time just chatting. Let's do it again soon Lisa!

I love this next one:

Finally when we got off the flight we went to wait for our luggage. But there it was, already sitting there waiting for us! Turned out they had sent our luggage on the 8AM flight, so it had been sitting there on the bag carousel for hours, just waiting for somebody to walk off with it. That made me mad.
After that we hurried to pick up Max, who was very glad to see us, and also rushed to pick up our red car that was in the shop getting fixed. Phew.

When we finally got home we walked into the house and were hit by a blast of arctic air when the door opened. It seemed the furnace wasn't working! The house was SO COLD. I had to run straight to school to take a test (which was not fun), so Kris called the landlord about the furnace. Unfortunately they couldn't fix it last night, so after I got home we all snuggled into our big bed and slept the night under an electric blanket next to the space heater. It was nice except for Max deciding he needed to sleep sideways and kicking me in the head all night.

Getting up was hard though. It was like camping or something. I was scared to get out of bed.
Anyway, the guy came this afternoon and fixed the furnace. Evidently a bird had flown down there and gotten rather stuck. So finally Max and I were able to come out of the bedroom where we'd been holed up next to the space heater. Starting to go crazy.
I'll tell you what though, next time your heat goes out make sure you have some peanut m&ms in the cupboard. They taste awesome frozen. Yum yum.
It was almost impossible to do anything in the house when it was that cold, it was kind of crazy. Oh well. At least we're warm now.

So I have some fun pictures from our RI trip, and some impressions, I'll get to those soon hopefully!
I'll leave you with this picture. I think it's beautiful, but it makes me cold. Isn't it just so wintry and cold looking? Brrrr.....