round and round

Here's a taste of how we are spending all of those indoor hours the past few weeks.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by Amanda.

a new low

The temperature outside was -15 this morning. Elsewhere in Northwest Arkansas, it was -17 degrees. That is the coldest temperature EVER recorded in our area for as long as temperatures have been officially recorded. It's cold.

And the snow. It's crazy, measuring two feet in the low spots.
Talk about a winter wonderland. This boy has been loving it.

This boy has, too.

Too much snow on the face = massive brain freeze. Lesson learned.

But they still go back for more...

snowed in...again

Last night, the forecast said we'd get maybe 4-7 inches of snow, but we woke up this morning to a good 18 inches with more coming down.

We are up to 25 inches in our front yard, and it just keeps coming.

Liam wasn't so thrilled when he and Gabriel jumped off the porch into it. He screamed no, no, no!

And since snow days make me go crazy with the baking, we started our morning with these cranberry orange love muffins. And we loved them.

a bunch of bananas with olives

Our morning routine looks something like this:

6:00 am - Gabriel wakes up and gets ready for work, Liam wakes up demanding breakfast, and River wakes up wanting to nurse. I bring him into bed with me, feed him, and we both drift back to sleep (getting any precious minutes of sleep I can...).

7:00 am - Gabriel comes upstairs to say goodbye, leaving Liam downstairs watching a show on the computer.

7:15ish am - I come downstairs to see what Liam has gotten into.

This time - I'm making dinner!

and the snow keeps coming

After last Tuesday's snow storm, we had even more snow come down on Friday, and more snow again is forecasted for tonight and tomorrow. It just keeps coming. I know this is no big deal compared to what the states north of us are experiencing, but for Arkansas, this kind of wintery weather is extreme.

So, what do we do when the weather outside is frightful?

Mostly stay inside, enjoying the snow from the comfort of our living room.

But we did venture out a few times, like when my mom's car got stuck...

We walked, and sledded, down to the taco shop for dinner on Friday. It was funny to see so many of our neighbors there, too.

Random acts of snowman-ing.

Gabriel and Liam built one for our yard, too. Liam was so excited to build the biggest snowman in the world.

He was so proud of his snowman that I thought he'd be upset when it fell over later in the day. But no, Liam laughed and laughed. He has quite the sense of humor.

pardon the mess...

I am working on some reformatting, but I should have everything up and running in the next day or so.

The blog shouldn't go offline anymore (it didn't work from last night until just a few minutes ago, did you notice?), but now I have successfully moved everything from Typepad back to Blogspot and brought the domain name with me (which means you don't have to type in anything other than simplyontheearth.com to find me...).

Some new features:

-all of my blogsposts will be in the same spot
-a recipes page
-a booklist featuring books I recommend
-a changing list of books we're currently reading
-links to what I am enjoying on the world wide web
-links to my daily blog reads

Any other suggestions?

Now I am off to get all of the pictures fixed...