Have an Ice Day, Nice Snowin' Ya!

January.  Ah, is there anything like it?  No?  Good.

Oh the joy!

     Does it ever seem to you like all the excitement after the holidays dies down and now we're in a sunless snow filled month with no holidays in sight?  Okay.  Well, there is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, right?  But this January has been colder and bleaker than most in my opinion, weatherwise anyway.  Lots of snow, lots of ice.  

Taylor using the shovel for playtime!

     One of the great joys of homeownership, I've learned is outside work.  In the springtime it's cleaning out the gardens and replanting.  Or if you're like me, looking at everyone else doing that and thinking how I really should get around to doing that.  There's also getting the sprinkling system up and working again after the winter.  And then there's the mowing.  That's a whole story in its own right!  Our lawn is a mutant lawn, I think.  Different parts grow at different lengths and all of them grow faster than the neighbors of course.  And don't even get me started on the weeding!

     But in the winter, the diverting chores (hardy har!) are all about snow and ice.  It snows.  You shovel.  Then it shows some more.  So you shovel some more.  A few weeks ago when we had the really bad snow storm I was out shoveling.  And the snow kept getting stuck to my shovel.  So I kicked the shovel and the snow fell out.  I made the mistake of thinking that this was a good solution.  After much kicking of the shovel (Hey, come on!  There was a ton of shoveling to do!) I finally kicked it so hard that for a minute I thought I had broken my toe.  See here's my gross toe picture.  It really was much worse than it looks in this pic.   (Aren't you glad you showed up at my blog this week?)

     Now in January we've progressed.  Now it's not snow, it's freezing rain and ice.  Many days when I take my lunch break from work I go home and eat since I live close to my work.  Yesterday, I went out and EVERYTHING had ice on it.  I almost fell down like 4 times just walking to my car.  Then I had to scrape all the ice off my windshield and almost fall again getting in to the car.  The roads weren't too bad until you got to my street.  Nobody had salted it yet and it was a complete sheet of ice.  Then I turn into my driveway, which mind you has an incline and -surprise, surprise- is pure ice as well, and I got stuck going up it.  I was kind of scared for a little while.  I finally ended up getting my car into the garage.  I had to sprinkle rock salt all over the driveway and hope that I would be able to get back out so I could return to work.  Which went much better, by the way.

     And haven't you been enjoying the inversion these past few weeks, fellow Salt Lake-ians?  Mmm...just what I love.  Breathing air I can actually see!  Yuncky!  (That's a word my friend made up and we use it.  It means yucky...with a Kick!)

     Ah well, life includes a little sliding every now and then.  Can't have blue skies every day.  Might get kind of boring.

The wonderful Katie and Briant

     I did however escape the Salt Lake air last week.  Lyle and I went to St. George with our friends Briant and Katie.  Briant's parents have a place there so we didn't have to pay for a hotel and we brought food to eat.  People ask what we did while we were there, and to tell you the truth we did almost nothing cool.  It was so relaxing and absolutely blissful!  Briant had a couple of fabulous movies I'd never seen:  The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and Dark and Stormy Night.  All you other stupid movie fans rejoice!  They were excellent.  Lyle doesn't like stupid movies as much as I do, but we did watch a movie just for him too.

Doesn't Lyle look so happy having his picture taken?

     Ah, the dryer is done.  Back to more laundry.  Hope you have a great week and enjoy this...um...very unique weather we've been having!

Laura