The weather since we’ve been back has been amazingly warm.  It’s nice that we’re having an early spring, but it cut snowmobiling season short, and I only got one short ride in.  Emily rode with me for the first time ever!  We went to Giants Ridge for lunch, cruised around Wynne Lake a little, and then rode home.  That was it for me for the whole season, though it was a very nice ride.

As of today, the driveway is almost completely clear of snow, and large portions of the yard are too.  Everything is really muddy and wet, but in another week or so I bet it’ll be nice and dry.  Of course, as soon as that happens we’ll probably get two more feet of snow.

A couple weeks ago, Henry and I took my Dad’s truck to Virginia to have lunch and get a yard cart that was on sale.  I’ve been wanting one since we moved here, and now we finally have one.  Henry helped me put it together, and he really did help – he handled a socket wrench like a pro and together we got the axle bolted on to the cart body.  My 4 wheeler doesn’t have a trailer hitch of any kind, so after much thought and a great suggestion from instructables.com, I made one out of muffler clamps and a steel l-shaped bracket.  It was a bit of a tricky welding job, but I got it done and after some use it seems to be holding.  Welding is hard.  There are so many variables to figure out in order to get a good weld.  With this project I winged it, and while it does seem to be holding, the welds are far from good.  My problem was mostly getting sort of a hollow bead.  Instead of having a nice smooth fill, it’s like there’s a groove in the bead, so it almost looks like two small beads.  I think it may be due to using too much current, but it might have also been the angle at which I held the rod, and the motion I used.

My Mom stayed with us for a week and the kids had such a great time with her, as did we.  She got to meet Brad, the goats, and the horses for the first time, and she stayed at the great B&B near our house.  The weather was gorgeous so we even got to spend some time outside.  She also provided babysitting duties so Emily and I took a super romantic trip to the dump.  She even rode on the back of the four wheeler while Delia and Henry rode Sancho down the road.  Sancho did great – especially since he hasn’t been saddled since last fall.  We had some nice meals out, and she got to see Delia’s big ice skating show!  Delia did great, by the way.

We got 6 big round bales from Dale.  It was quite a chore to get them off the trailer.  The other round bales we got rolled right off, but these were SUPER heavy.  With his help, we finally got it done.  They’re all scattered about and I’ll have to get my tractor running to move them around.  Delia is having fun climbing and jumping on them.  She calls it Haytown.

We had a bit of sadness too.  Two of our chickens had apparently been sitting in some water late in the day, and ended up getting frozen to the ground.  Hypothermia claimed them during the night and I found them in the morning, stuck to the ground.  :(  We had thought about getting chicks this year and then decided against it, but now we’re going to since we only have 4 layers left.  I think we’re going to get six – two white leghorns, an easter egger or two, maybe a black australorp, and I’m not sure what else.

It’s been really cold.  Really, really cold.  Highs below zero for several days with nighttime lows in the 30s and 40s below.   The all-time unofficial low temperature in Embarrass was reached on February 2, 1996 at -64°F. More recently, Embarrass reached -54°F on January 17, 2005.

A few mornings ago I walked out and noticed our big window looked weird.  It looked like a kid had drawn on it with a white crayon at first, but I took a closer look and realized it’s a crack.  It’s really weird, it goes from the edge to the middle of the glass and stops without hitting another edge.  It’s the inner pane of the thermal pane.  Apparently the cold was too much for it.  Insurance doesn’t cover it.

I was on the phone today with State Farm getting this information, when Ryan called.  He was on his way to Ely to thaw pipes at our apartment building and he had gone off the road into the ditch!  Luckily, he and the car are both fine, and he was really close to a tow truck so he didn’t wait long to get pulled out.  When it’s this cold, car exhaust freezes and makes the roads slick.

The frozen pipes at the building were a relatively easy fix too, although Ryan did lose several hours to that chore.  If that hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t have gone to the garage and realized it was below freezing in there and that we were completely out of propane!  We were able to call and get our tank filled within a few hours for a pretty reasonable extra charge — I had called yesterday for a normal “come give us some propane when you’re in the area” kind of thing, but we didn’t know we were SO low.  The house didn’t cool down at all though, and it was a weekday early afternoon.  It could have been Friday evening…

So, we’re surviving.  We’re playing lots of video games and we have a slide in the living room for some physical activity.  The kids chase each other around and jump and wrestle on the beds.  Delia, Henry and I are getting some exercise with some cleaning projects too.  We got a new Swiffer, and they fight over it.  Might have to get another one so both kids can do it at the same time!  Or look even harder for the missing piece to our old one…

One day soon hopefully we’ll get pictures up of our travels to Illinois and Florida for the holidays.  We had a wonderful time!

We got some.  It’s hard to say how much because of all the drifting, but it’s substantial.  The plow came this morning and nicely cleared one side of our driveway right to the garage door.  I shoveled away the rest and made a little path from the deck to the garage door.  There’s a drift against the barn door up past my waist.

The wood boiler is doing great.  The key is to keep it really full.

The chickens are as warm as can be expected, and they’re still laying!  We have to collect eggs as early as possible in the morning and then throughout the day, or they freeze and explode.

Last night I took my Phazer out and carved up the back yard!  It was awesome.  It blew so much overnight that I can’t even see my tracks.  I put it, my Indy, and Delia’s Kitty Cat in the garage to get them ready for the season.  The trails aren’t groomed yet, but will be soon.  I MAY try to go out a little on Thursday, but I doubt I’ll have time before we leave.

Chickens are all together in an mostly finished coop, completely with little chicken chute tunnel to get through the fence into the run!  We have a bulb on a timer so we’re getting 5-7 eggs a day (from 11 hens) and Ryan’s doing finishing touches like hanging the water/food, getting the deep layer of shavings in for winter, etc.  Today he put the heater in to keep them toasty.

Chubby stopped eating for a few days, so we took him to the vet.  They were pretty sure he had eaten something like thread or yarn and recommended a few days of lubrication therapy (smearing Vaseline behind his teeth), but it didn’t work to dislodge the blockage.  He went in for successful surgery Friday and stayed there over the weekend – we’ll pick him up tomorrow.  They found thread, ribbon and other assorted non-food bits in him.  He’s been chewing on weird stuff (Crocs and the spongey floor tiles I have by my workbench) for months – I don’t know if he’s been trying to fix the problem or his stupidity of chewing on everything finally caught up with him.

The vet asked about Lucy while we were there.  (Lucy had been really skinny in the spring, but is fine now.)  I happened to mention her leaking problem, which it turns out is a common (12%) issue in spayed females.  Lucy is now on estrogen pills (1 per day for 5 days, then weekly for maintenance) and so far it appears to be working!  Yay!

The washing machine is broken.  The spring that we thought would fix it, didn’t – well, not completely.  Now we are trying to figure out if we should buy another part and try to fix it, or have someone who may know what they’re doing come out and see what’s going on.  The dryer still works, so we have just been taking 2-3 loads to the Babbitt Laundromat when we’re going there anyway, then we dry them at home.

Delia’s started ice skating lessons again.  She’s in Basic 2 now, and it didn’t take long for her to get her skates under her.  She’s getting more confidence about reading, loves thinking about numbers and space.  In the past few days she’s made a few books “for Henry to learn,” decorated some bookmarks, and has been into Rainbow Fairy series books and the website.  She’s the “firemaster” when we have fires, which means she helps get them started, keeps them going, and sticks long wooden skewers in, chars them, writes her name on the logs in the fireplace, and holds them by Henry for him to blow out.

Henry’s dancing, jumping, and as Delia says “always into something.”   He loves Bob the Builder and Oswald.  He is saying lots of words but is even better at communicating by pointing, pushing and pulling.  He’s very patient and nods yes or no until we know what he wants.

The back windshield wiper on the car broke several months ago, and we had it in to a dealership but they haven’t ordered the part yet and now apparently it’s trying to to come back to life even when the car is off and it keeps draining the battery.  I’m heading to Ely tomorrow and I’m probably not going to turn the car off the entire time I’m there, just in case it won’t start again.  It’ll be just like the time on a roadtrip when my starter was broken and I drove from St Charles Louisiana to Tampa without turning the bus off.

We keep getting dustings of snow, but haven’t had enough to start riding the snow machines.  The pond is freezing up nicely, I think we’ll be able to skate on it soon.  Last year we did on Thanksgiving so maybe we’ll do that again this year.

This morning we all went to Babbitt for a few garage sales and then for a bike ride on the paved trail. There wasn’t much good stuff at the garage sales, but afterward we ate lunch and then went to the bike trail. Delia rode her bike, and Emily and I walked and pushed Henry in the stroller, where he fell asleep after a while. Delia rode THREE AND A HALF MILES. I had my GPS with me, and it said just over 3.5 when we were done, and she probably even rode half a mile more than that since she doubled back quite a bit. She did amazingly well, with only one minor fall. When we got back to the car, she wanted to keep riding, so she and Emily rode on the sidewalk and I drove alongside. It started sprinkling a bit, so they got in the car and we went home. They played outside for quite a while, and I cleaned up the garage. It had been pretty windy all day long, but it was pleasant enough with only a few drops here and there. It started sprinkling again and we were about to go in, when all of a sudden the wind started howling and we got pelted with hail! It came out of nowhere, and stuff started blowing all over the place. A little potty even flew across the yard. We all ran in and I put a coat over my head and ran back out to close up the garage, grab what had blown away, and make sure the chickens were okay (they were hiding in the barn). My hands were actually sore when I got back to the house from getting hit with the hail.

There are some old tractor tires out in our field.  Two of them are really big and somebody made them into flower beds a long time ago.  Every time we ride by on the 4 wheeler, I tell Delia that we should drag one out with the tractor and make a sandbox.   Today we finally did it.  I figured it would be easy, but it was not.  They were really buried and wouldn’t budge.  I finally dug a hole under one side so I could fit a chain under it, and then I used my loader to lift them up and then push the dirt out and break the roots with a shovel.  It took a long time, but I finally got it loose, and carried it back to the sand pile with the tractor.  Delia and I shoveled sand into it, and now she and Henry have a sandbox!  They both played in it for a long time.  Henry even learned, after a while, that sand isn’t good to eat.

I couldn’t find the chickens today, so I was going to ride a 4 wheeler around to look for them.  As soon as Henry saw me get on, he started squirming out of Emily’s arms and pointing at me.  He loves riding them.  He’s also very interested in Delia’s bikes, skateboard, and tractor.  She generally gets all of them out at once when she goes outside, and then Henry makes the rounds, climbing on each one.  On the ones with three or more wheels, he can usually stand on the back and push off, or at least put his hands on them and push them around.

We had a bit of a storm tonight.  It didn’t rain much but there was a lot of lightning.  Delia and I stood outside and watched for quite a while.  She was fascinated, and I explained to her why she could see it before hearing it.

Late this afternoon Emily and Delia went for a bike ride while I worked more on organizing the garage.  Henry was asleep inside, but I had the monitor.  When he woke up, I got him dressed and took him down the road on the 4 wheeler to find Emily.  I met them about halfway down on their way back with Issac.

Delia and Issac had a great time playing on Delia’s bikes and scooters and also in the sand pile and by the pond.  The weather was just gorgeous.  It was chilly earlier in the day but by 4:00 it was nice and warm.  They play really well together and I got a lot of good pictures of them.  My favorite is when they filled a bucket with rocks and carried it to the pond together.

Henry is very officially walking now.  He almost never crawls, and he can walk a LONG way without falling.  Today he walked all the way from the driveway to the sand pile, and then some.

Watching the kids play outside, I was struck by how perfect a scene it was.  The sun cast a beautiful gold on everything and made the pond glisten.  The chickens were out for a while, and then we put them away and let the dogs out.  They ran up to the North woods and then came back and fetched sticks in the pond.  It was so much fun.

I’m sitting outside on the drive working, Delia is hammering nails, Henry is asleep in the stroller, the chickens are scratching around, Snowy the cat is playing, and everything is great. It’s 50 degrees, only a slight breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. I can hear a woodpecker in the distance and a grouse beating its wings periodically, and a couple of buffleheads are floating around on the pond.

I finished my radial arm saw last night. I got the table mounted with only one minor modification, and calibrated and adjusted everything. I’m dying to start on the coop. Emily is going to knitting tonight so I can’t do it then, but maybe tomorrow.

I also did quite a bit of organizing in the garage. I got all my tools out, sorted them into boxes (plumbing tools, wrenches, electrical tools, automotive, etc.) and I’ve got a lot of the smaller ones all nicely tucked into drawers. The bigger ones are still in boxes while I figure out what to do with them. I’m leaning toward hanging them on the wall.

It looks like we got about 5″ as of 7:30 tonight, and it was still coming down. Delia rode her Kitty Cat today and I plowed our driveway with the tractor. It worked out pretty well! I’m starting to get the hang of it, and once I get my hydraulics working, it’ll be much easier.

Today we had 2 male mallards, 4 female, and one bufflenose on the pond all at once. Emily also saw a goose out there floating around.

We have about an inch so far and it’s still coming down but not very hard.  They’re saying 1-3 today.  Phew!  That’s not bad at all.