Winter Days

As surely everyone knows by now, it is unusually snowy in the Pacific Northwest. NOW we have the kind of weather that's worth canceling school for.

People are making the most of it, and while I find it hard to relate to the excitement after several snow-filled high desert winters, I do find it enjoyable to watch a girl on a sled go whizzing by my kitchen window as I wash the dishes.  The neighbor boys piled up some snow for a snowboard jump, and I even saw a few snowmobiles out and about.

Of course our kids are loving it.  They're happy just to tromp around on our deck, making snow piles and trying to eat large shards of ice.

Our neighbors are very neighborly, and I am wishing that I had made the time to do some Christmas baking.  At some point I'm going to have to stop using Willem's surgery as an excuse for not doing more, but I guess we're still good for now. 

One neighbor sent her son over with some ginger spice cake, and another gave us a giant tub of popcorn.  You know the kind.  It's divided into regular, caramel, and toxic-looking cheese, and it looks totally unappealing in the store, only to become irresistible once it enters your house. Today, our next door neighbors sent their son over to shovel our driveway.  It's rather uncomfortable to accept a kind deed from a middle-school boy who would rather be doing something else.  Character building all around, I'm sure.

Of course the weather is making me want to fix all sorts of hearty meals.  That doesn't mean I do, but one does make an occasional appearance at our dinner table.  I had to share this meal from a few weeks ago with you because of its spectacular color. It's red cabbage with kielbasa, onions, and apples, with roasted potatoes on the side.  I was the only real fan of the dish.  The boys didn't like the vinegar in the cabbage, and Shaun, expecting it to taste like sauerkraut, found it a little bland.  I liked it.

Tonight, though, we'll have crowd-pleasing lentil and kielbasa soup.  I think it's the four cups of leeks (in addition to the four cups of onions) that make it extra tasty.  (No, I don't feed turkey kielbasa to my family every night, it just sometimes seems that way.  I know it's full of awful stuff.)

Of course winter hasn't been all kielbasa-eating and frolicking in the snow.   Because of the weather, lots of fun events like Nels's school Christmas program were canceled or postponed. I even saw on the news that one college had to cancel its winter commencement.  And my mom and grandpa were supposed to drive out from Bend, but the weather is keeping them home. 

Right now we're just thankful that our Christmas plans didn't require flying out of PDX this week, and we're looking forward to letting the boys loose in the two feet of snow at their Grandma and Grandpa's house.  If only we can get there.