Snow Cream

We are so ready for our new life in the deep South and particularly Savannah that we have adopted the locals' recipes. This is Paula's  recipe for snow cream.

8 cups of snow - (we somehow managed to find this)
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla

Evan and Campbell both claimed it was a bit too sweet, but I found nothing wrong with it. Now for Paula's fried chicken and cheddar biscuits. My mouth is watering already.

By the way, Evan always complains that he never gets a play date. Keagan is always headed to Mason's and no one ever invites Evan. When I invited Campbell, I thought he might balk at the idea of playing with a girl, but Campbell can hold her own. Within minutes they were playing a combination of Ben10 and Transformers. When she later suggested something with a fairy princess, Evan quickly told her he doesn't play that. She obliged and the fight among aliens continued.

King of the Hill

We have now completed three full days of complete isolation from the outside world. With twenty-two inches of snow on the ground, I have been blessed with wardrobes that include ever so comfy gym clothes, extra time to experiment with new recipes (the cheeseburger soup with pureed vegetables was oh-so good), multiple naps, and the shenanigans of two little boys. Here's my favorite.

With mountains of snow, the boys decided to build caves in the snow. That sounded like a great idea to me until they decided one boy would be the bear living in the cave, and the other boy would be the man hunting the bear with a gun. See? I told you the entire prey vs predator thing had intensified in our house.

In the end, Keagan announced he was "King of the Snow Hill." Thankfully the big bear hunt evolved into an episode of "Survivor Man" and the only hunting that transpired was for imaginary fish that lived in imaginary lakes.

Blizzard Part 2

Who would have thought that we would be getting this much snow in Virginia, but here we are hunkering down for blizzard number two of the winter. With another twenty inches on its way, I feel compelled to prepare in some way. So this is what I did.

1. I vacuumed. If I am going to be stuck at home for three days, then I must have carpet with ever so slight vacuum tracks so that I feel like I did something productive while I spend countless hours on-line searching real estate websites and making my wish list at Anthropologie.com. And I am addicted to my Dyson. I never knew that my house was so dirty! I mean, in the past week I have vacuumed the house four times, and today I emptied the bagless canister with clumps of stuff thick enough to stuff pillows. I am so captivated by the suction on this thing that I have the desire to vacuum almost daily just so I can prove how valuable a purchase I made.

2. I rented movies. And because it has easily been two years since I stepped into a Blockbuster, I almost forgot how to rent a movie. In fact, I checked out with the empty display cases, and Almadad, the cashier, had to kindly explain the process for finding the cases that actually hold the movies. We came home fully expecting a snow day tomorrow, and in order to keep the peace, I put Up! in the disk player and pushed play. I was instantly hooked. What a great movie! So it hasn't even dropped a flake yet, and we have seen the movie of choice.

3. I bought books. It is 8:30 and I just opened a Dr. Pepper fully expecting the caffeine to pulse through my veins so that I can stay awake past 9:00 to read Nefertiti, the story of an Egyptian Queen. I think it is working.

4. I bought powdered sugar and crisco. If there is a downside to all of this snow, then it is all the time I have had to bake. In the past month, we have had fudge, cookies, and brownies galore, but that won't stop me from making a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting tomorrow. It will be wonderful until I feel that roll of fat on my belly growing larger!

So here's to another storm!

Snow Day!

Six more inches of snow last night, and it is one of the most beautiful snows I have ever seen. I can almost identify with cultures that have multiple words for snow because last night's snow is not like one I have seen before. Evan rolled out of bed, looked out the window, and exclaimed to Wes, "It looks just like Narnia!" I agree that it looks too perfect to be real.

After the snow last weekend Evan told me he thought this was the best winter ever, but he added, "I don't want to stick around to see if next winter is better!" He says he is tired of it, but if we get the 30 inches on Saturday (and that has been circulated on various websites the past couple of days), he better learn to like it.

Let It Snow!

I am having a hard time envisioning twenty inches of snow. I saw one deep snow when we lived in Ansbach, but it was more like ten inches. I am not sure how anyone prepares for that much snow, and because no one here in the city really believed that the storm would be this big, not many people did much to prepare. So after work today I joined the millions of other people who were out in full force trying to take care of last minute errands, fully expecting to be snowed in for the next three days. And because the meteorologists add another inch or two of snow to the expected total about every three hours, I am now really worried that I didn't do enough to prepare. Here was our plan as of 7:25 this morning when I left for work:

- Purchase salt for the sidewalks and driveway. I am not really sure why we did this because a fine dusting of salt will not do much with twenty inches of snow sitting on top of it. At 7:00 this morning it seemed to make a lot more sense.

- Does anyone send Christmas cards anymore? After debating this for weeks, I decided to just skip it this year. I couldn't find a good picture of the boys to put on the card (really, Evan, can you just smile once???). It's just plain expensive at 44 cents a pop for postage. After deciding to just forget it, I found myself at the post office today buying two books of holiday stamps so the cards will arrive before Santa does.

- Purchase sleds. For the past two years, the boys have used the sled of our 19 year old neighbor. She is a girl. The sled is pink. Wes decided he wasn't going to spend the entire week photo-shopping the pink sled in our wonderful snow pictures (the picture that should probably be on our Christmas card), and he didn't want anyone to know his boys were sitting on anything dainty and feminine like a pink sled. Never mind it moves like a bullet down the golf course hills and offers hours of pure enjoyment for the boys. Our new sleds are red and blue - very manly choices.

- I made the late night run to Target to score a few supplies. You would assume this would include milk or eggs. Staples that any family would need during a major snowstorm. However, I was in dire need of marsh mellow creme and semi-sweet chocolate chips because with all the time I expect to have, I thought it would be nice to make a batch of fudge. Can you believe that Target does not sell marsh mellow creme? The horror. The bigger horror, though, was the parking lot of Shoppers on 234. There was no way I was entering that mayhem. I decided against fudge and decided to make sugar cookies instead. We will re-emerge from this storm with a few extra pounds because I have some grand baking plans.

- When I heard snow, I knew I wanted a fire. It was too late to call McGyver, the affectionate name we give the LADY that re-lights the antiquated gas stove every year in our house. That meant the job was left to Wes. He took the entire stove apart yesterday morning, and we now sit in front of a warm fire. I owe him big.

We are now armed with salt, sleds, sugar cookies, and a warm fire.

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!!!