Apparently I took Theresa’s suggestion for a break quite literally! It’s good to be back with posting. It’s been a cozy month with much downtime with friends and family snuggled deep in our nest and neighborhood. I was wondering what I might do for this weeks theme since before Christmas. Ask and ye shall receive indeed! Here in South Carolina it snowed on Christmas for the first time since around 1968. Mind you we aren’t on the coast- we are in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, so it often snows within an hour of us but usually here it might dust us and melt by midday. Well late Christmas night down it came and we went out to play. Zuzu was convinced it was ice-cream falling and a treat for her to enjoy. The girls were invited out to romp in the snow. The day after Christmas we had to deliver Lovey’s brother to the airport and more happy snow scenery shots were taken on the ride. Then yesterday we got a real midwestern snow! Between 6-12 inches in our own backyard!  Lovey was able to pull out his cross-country skis and surf wax and take a little ride down the road. Zuzu was in hot-pursuit letting me know I needed to go up to the attic and bring down her skis and skates. She still believes in Santa Claus, but I’m fairly certain a little bit of magic that your parents just produce what you need when you need it wore off this morning as I attempted to explain that she was not born in a land of snow where children routinely ski and skate like Max and Ruby and Arthur and Dora. Even as I explained it for the third time she was insisting that I just go upstairs and look for them for her.  Her sister on the other hand would have preferred to have been left indoors. Even though there is a widely smiling face in the pictures, the gravy train of a wagon ride ended fairly quickly when Zuzu spotted an Uncle she could stalk with a snowball. The Quail was delighted to be toted around, less so to be let go into the snow on her own. Monday’s snow had no-such wagon rides though since we got a few too many inches to be able to safely pull her through. And with that the delight was all of two minutes. You can hardly blame her though seeing as her parents also didn’t magically have good snow pants to tuck her into and ended up stuffing her into enough cottony layers to leave her standing as a scarecrow on her own. Between that, the mittens and a hat being secured to her head there wasn’t much happiness and frolicking to be found.

As I was typing this though it changed over to freezing rain and becoming much more treachorous outside. South Carolina winters as we have known them have typically produced a handful of snowdays a year- but really should be called ice-days. When the typical driver routinely carries a chainsaw in his trunk to move away dead limbs he comes across, well the little girl in me decides to just stay home.

Onto the scenic beauty:

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