Snowmageddon 2014 in Alabama

Okay, so I have always thought, “I like to get snow every now and then.” Correction: I like the thought of getting snow and I like it when it snows ONE inch, then melts by the next day. When we REALLY get snow, I’ve learned that I actually hate it. I hate having to drive in it. As southerners, we just aren’t accustomed to these weather conditions. Other than play in our yards, we do not know how to function in winter storms, and that was proven as a fact last week when it snowed on February 11th and 13th in North Alabama.

Honestly, we all thought that the 11th was bad when it snowed maybe 1.5″, but at least it had melted by noon.

As you can tell there wasn’t even enough snow to cover the ground when our daughter wanted to make a snow angel. We had so much fun, though! It was too powdery for a snowman, but we used the snow on our cars and patio table to make snow balls and had a snow ball fight. By mid-day it was all gone, and we were looking at normal Alabama winter conditions.

Tuesday brought cold, cold, COLD rain in the early morning. By noon, however, it had turned to sleet. I left work early that day just to avoid icy roads and crazy drivers. I pulled in my driveway around 3 p.m. as it started to snow. When it started snowing, it literally NEVER STOPPED until after 11 p.m. I was a little disappointed at first. The ground was so wet from all of the rain, that nothing was sticking. But as the temperature dropped, things started to change. The first picture is when it finally started to stick to the leaves and grass around 3:45.

This second picture was around 5 p.m.! That’s how much snow we had gotten total the day before!

Here we are at 9 p.m. As you can see, snow was still coming down hard. It continued for another TWO HOURS. I seriously don’t remember getting this much snow in North Alabama. I’ve heard stories, but I was either too little to remember or not born yet. That’s how often it happens. My sidewalk is almost invisible! Our driveway had already been that way for a while.

I also got to mark something off of my 24 Before 24! Making homemade ice cream! When I put that on the list, I thought this would enable me to make an excuse for purchasing an ice cream maker this summer! Well, we made SNOW CREAM! We didn’t have any condensed milk, so we made do with a bowl of snow from our patio table, milk, sugar and vanilla flavoring. Then we crushed up some Butterfingers and added them, making it like a Blizzard! (:

We spent Thursday morning taking turns between playing in the snow, breakfast break, and warm up breaks.

Below is what too much snow can do on a poor pine tree that isn’t accustomed to 4-6″ of snow!

My daughter thought the snow was so amazing. (:

Below is my sad attempt at a snow angel. Ha!

Of course, later in the morning I had to drag myself to work. I hate driving in icy conditions, and when 6 inches of snow has fell, even with roads grated, people lose their common sense. (Then again, people tend to do that when it sprinkles in July. They suddenly forget how to drive.) But it was definitely worth a few hours of fun with my family!! My daughter sometimes runs to the door and says, “No! We’ll never get to see the snow again!” I promise her there might be more next winter, but I am silently thinking, I don’t want anymore like that for a year or two! Ha!

Advertisement

24 Before 24

So a week ago I found myself on the blog The Duchess of Plumewood. I love her stuff! She does this Birthday Bucket List. For example: I will be 24 this year, so I would make a list of 24 things to do before I turn 24. And the lists increases for each year. I love the idea! I’ve gathered some inspiration from her and thought of things that fit my life. Here is what made the cut:

1.      Go hiking

2.      Write one handwritten letter a month

3.      Learn how use a sewing machine

4.      Take blog followers to over 50

5.      Make homemade ice cream

6.      Watch a play

7.      Start a diary

8.      Try a new food

9.      Do a cleanse

10.  Make a KIVA loan

11.  Read 24 books

12.  Become CPR Certified

13.  Write myself a letter to be opened in 10 years… and a letter to Santa

14.  Take my Mom to dinner

15.  Learn to drive a manual car

16.  Wake up before 6AM every day for 2 weeks

17.  Skydive for my birthday

18.  Take a Dance Class

19.  make dinner every night for a week with my crock-pot

20.  make 5 things off Pinterest

21.  get a new tattoo

22.  Mark 10 things off of my 2014 Family Bucket List

23.  Learn to make homemade biscuits

24.  Make a 25 before 25

Some of these things I am already working on..

like the reading part. I can’t wait to see if I can get them all completed by October!

Do you want to do this as well? Head on over to duchessofplumewood.blogspot.com/‎

where I found my inspiration!

2014 Bucket List

Wow. It truly seems like this past year went by faster than any before. Maybe it was all of the activity that kept us so busy!

This year in 2013 we:

1. Celebrated our daughter’s 2nd Birthday!
2. Purchased our first home (yay, no more climbing apartment stairs!)
3. Participated in a Dragon Boat Race together! (I really wish there was a video.)
4. Experienced the sudden death of a friend.
5. Went on a family canoe trip.
6. Completed an internship while working full time.
7. I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree!!!
8. Took our first family trip to the zoo.
9. Bought a Welsh Pony for our daughter.
10. Attended monthly youth rodeos for our daughter.
11. Successfully (we think) planted our first flower bed together!
12. Welcomed a new niece to the family!
13. WE GOT ENGAGED!!!
14. I volunteered to become a Girl Scout troop leader.
15. Adopted our first Salvation Army Christmas Angel.
16. Got a 12 week old Miniature Dachshund (long-haired, dapple) puppy for Christmas.
17. I overcame an iron deficiency after 2 IV iron treatments.
18. I am still battling an anemia induced B12 deficiency.
19. Successfully potty trained our daughter. Hallelujah!
20. Decided on/ purchased our first major appliance together: a Dishwasher.

Of course, we did the celebrating birthdays of multiple family members and friends (trust me when I say MULTIPLE); attended weddings and showers for those getting married; and of course showed up for every holiday get together with both sides of our family.

Did I mention that we have a two year old who has two speeds: asleep and wide open?

Maybe that list does not seem as busy as others, but it was very constant for us. And 2014 already looks busy!

With planning an upcoming baby shower in January for my best friend, a 3rd birthday party for our daughter in February, and then our wedding in October I am already tired. Ha! I feel like I should’ve went into a career involving event planning.

Throughout the last week I have been reflecting on this year, how it has flown by, all of the events coming in 2014, and like most honest people, the things I regret never getting around to or that I had hoped to do. I’ve decided instead of doing “resolutions”, I want us to create a Bucket List for 2014. I don’t want our end of 2014 year reflections to mainly be surviving or going through the motions of life. I want to accomplish more than that. I want us individually and as a family to be more adventurous, dedicated to one another, and accomplish those projects we keep procrastinating. Here are the things we hope to experience and accomplish this year:

2014 Bucket List for Our Family

1. Sky dive. Isn’t this usually on everyone’s “Life Bucket List”? I wanted to sky dive for my 18th birthday, but you had to be 19 without parental consent. There was no way my mother was signing a consent form allowing me to jump from a plane. I want to sky dive this Summer. Obviously, the toddler will have to miss this adventure.

2. Zip line through the mountains. We are going on our honeymoon in Asheville, North Carolina in October and have actually found a place to check this off of the list. Yay!

3. Spontaneous weekend Road Trip. I know that we will be going on our honeymoon in October and need to be budgeting for the wedding, but the honeymoon trip will be made without our daughter. We already missed out on any traveling in 2013 because I used every bit of my vacation and sick time from work to complete my internship. Even if we do a simple Memorial Day weekend trip to stay with friends in Gulf Shores, it will be a needed refresher.

4. Put down electronics and focus more on one another. You can find the inspiration and need for this in a previous post about becoming a Hands Free Mama.

5. Complete major outdoor projects. We really NEED to refinish/refurbish/revamp our storage building and build the pony a stable and put up a fence for her, so that we can bring her home from my in-laws house. She has already eaten a few young tree saplings. (Oops.) And I WANT to plant our front flower bed since we did the back one first. I know that sounds backwards, but the way our house was originally built, the back is the curb appeal view when pulling into the drive way. Hopefully we are going to be here for a few years, so I’m not trying to rush ALL of the projects and to-do lists. If we can get those three things done this year I will just be happy as a lark. (;

6. Survive our wedding. No really. Not because I am a bridezilla and plan to make it a helluva day for everyone, but because I want to hopefully have a stress-free planning/wedding day, and then have a great honeymoon trip. I want to have the plans made without procrastinating so that the day can just flow and happen. Surely that’s what every bride wants, right?

7. Invest more in our relationship. With both of us working full time and having a 2 year old, there leaves little time for the necessity of sleep, let alone time to invest in ourselves and in our relationship the way we should. If there is one thing I want to make a priority this coming year, it is to remember our relationship needs more. Even if we have a low-cost date night just once a month, that will be more than we accomplished in 2013!

8. Practice patience. I want to learn how to practice patience with our daughter as she is learning and growing and changing on us.I don’t want to miss a moment of it.

9. Let Go. Let go of the people and things in our lives that we cannot control and that we cannot continuously please. Letting go of how much effort I put into wanting to achieve an environment of “harmony” or “getting along” with the overly and unnecessarily negative people that are permanent figures in my life is a huge issue of mine. To be such a strong willed, opinionated, and minded person it amazes even me that I have such a problem with this. I cannot and do not want to remove them from my life, but the concern for their happiness/ approval/ “friendship” before my happiness has come to a halt. Hey, lessons have been learned this year!

10. Focus and invest 110% more on my daughter than I already do. I hope that we can develop a schedule of 2 nights a week that are ALWAYS devoted to crafts/ learning/ bible study with her. We already do those things, but this week might be 4 nights a week, next week just once, then 2 weeks might pass until it happens again. I want to get us on a schedule of consistent development and learning time.

11. Learn ABC’s by recognition. This one is for our daughter, as I hope you knew. (; She can singe her ABC’s 50 times in a row and never mess up. But we are still struggling with recognizing a majority of them on sight. By this time next year, I want to have made significant progress on this.

12. Pray more. I believe this is self explanatory. Before making major decisions in our lives, I want us to learn how to pray more and end up stressing less!

13. Live. We both want to learn to let go of obsessing with the little things or the stressors in life. Our daughter spills an entire glass of milk in the kitchen floor because she is truly trying to be a “big girl” and help, hey it is okay. They make towels and napkins for that. Life is about so much more than that.

So how was your New Year’s? Do you have any important resolutions or a bucket list for 2014?

Whatever your new year thoughts and plans are, I hope that you thoroughly enjoy life this year and all it has to offer!

From my family to yours, have a great 2014!