Saturday Snapshot

 Saturday Snapshot is hosted by At Home with Books. To participate in this meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
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 It's still cold here and we still have snow on the ground. Ugh. I hate to be a whiner, and the weather here can change in a heartbeat, but last year was a remarkably mild March and it spoiled me. We had a record high temp of 75 degrees on 3/18/12! I know spring will be here soon so in the meantime I'll post some of my photos from last year. These are the things that bring me so much happiness and I'm anxiously awaiting their arrival!

Finding the first flowers of spring

Putting up the humming bird feeder

Gardening

Moonlit nights at the lake for our annual family vacation

Watching our flag blow in the breeze

Walking our dogs

Playing in the yard with Princess and Monkey Boy

And of course - reading (& napping) in my hammock!

Cold, cold, cold...

When I woke up this morning it was 4 degrees outside (feels like -2 with wind chill) and 54 degrees inside. On the coldest day of this winter (so far) our furnace quit working! Fortunately, Hubby is a manager at a heating/plumbing/lumber store and was a carpenter before that. He is extremely extraordinarily handy. He figured it out in no time and although it took a little longer than that to fix it, fix it he did! It's getting warmer and almost downright cozy in here. I've even been able to take off one of my coats. Is it wrong that watching Hubby restore heat to our cold, cold house is a turn on? Thank you to the sexiest man in the world!!!

*Update - The furnace quit again! Hubby had to come home from work for the third time today and put in a new motor. Luckily my youngest son had just gotten home from his job so he helped. I'm pretty handy but not that handy.  Fortunately all three of my boys are like their dad - they can fix vehicles, build things, weld stuff, etc. I never could get them to pick up their dirty socks but they are incredibly handy too! It's getting warmer now and I think I can take my coat off. Fingers crossed that this does the trick!

Awesome grandpa!

Come on Mother Nature!

I hate to complain with all that's going on in the world today. This is really just venting a bit of frustration rather than complaining. I do know how lucky I am and count my blessings every day but come on Mother Nature!

We are used to the snow and cold here in western NY state but this has been a tough winter. We have had lots of storms. We do recover quickly though. My house is in the valley out in the boonies and we are one of the last places to have all the snow melt away. Last week that finally happened here with the warmer temperatures. We could finally see our yard with all the mud, sticks and dog poop that are usually our first signs of spring around here. Over the weekend we did a little clean up, played in the sand box and saw our first robins and blue jays. I told my boys that we still had some crappy weather coming since it's only March. Spring is tricky around here and we have quite a variety of weather conditions. Little did I know that we would get hit so hard so soon!

The snow started falling again last night and we have a storm warning until midnight tonight. We've had 10-12" of snow so far and now it's sleeting. We are fortunate enough to have wonderful neighbors who plow our driveway (often!) and earlier I went out to shovel the walkways and toss bread crumbs to the hungry birds. It's great exercise and the blanket of snow is beautiful but I've had enough. Really. I miss my hammock, the flowers and the grass. Gentler weather would be welcomed and appreciated. And I promise, Mother Nature, I won't complain about the hot days of summer or mowing the lawn. Bring it on!

S-s-s-so cold!

It's cold today. Really cold. Colder than a witch's...well, you know. With the wind chill factor it was -14 degrees and that was during the daytime. And it's suppose to get even colder the next two days. Two of my children left the house today wearing hooded sweatshirts instead of coats. They are teens and they all drive so they don't like the bulk of a winter coat. And I gave up trying to tell them what to do a long time ago. I have to say that I often do the same thing when I'm just running back and forth from the car to another building. Coats are a pain! Can you tell we are used to living like this? A little bit of snow and cold doesn't slow us down much. It almost takes an act of God to get a snow day here school is so rarely canceled. It's western NY state after all. We just suck it up and pray for an early spring. That will probably be about mid June. I'm not kidding.

Miracles and Cold Weather

We got home from working at a fund raiser dinner for my kid's team last night and it felt a little chilly in our house. We live in south western NY state, the area near Buffalo, Rochester and Niagara Falls, and it's been really, really cold here this week. It was -8 but -21 with the wind chill factor (that means with the wind it feels like -21) and today was even colder. It's not the norm but it happens every now and then. It's not so cold that my kid and his buddies felt the need to put their sweatpants on over their shorts after basketball practice. I picked them up from the school and they wandered out in their shorts. They did have the decency to put on their sweatshirts though. I didn't even argue with them. In fact, I debated on turning the heater off in the van just to see how manly they felt then. I didn't though. Yet. Each of these kids are the youngest of three brothers and they are all ages 15 or 16. They weren't going to listen to me and I wasn't wasting my breath on any of them.

But I digress. We got home at 7:30 last night and it was too cold inside. I checked the thermostat and it was 60 degrees in our house. Our furnace wasn't coming on. My husband works in the heating and plumbing supply business so he has a lot of know how but he couldn't fix it this time. We had to call the Furnace Guy. The Furnace Guy is a friend and a good egg and we felt bad dragging him out in the cold at night. But we would have felt even worse if we didn't call him and froze to death. We really, really wanted heat again. He got paid for it so I don't think it bothered him for too long. It was an easy fix once they discovered the problem so he got to scurry back home to his recliner. And we got to start unwrapping our layers of blankets. Whew! Broken furnace - not good. Easy fix - very good. It may have been a nuisance to deal with but I feel very fortunate that it wasn't any worse and again count my blessings.


Miracle on the Hudson

Speaking of counting your blessings, the plane crash yesterday in NY city was tragic that it crashed but a miracle that everyone survived and there seem to be relatively few injuries. From all the accounts I have heard so far the pilot and crew did an amazing job diverting a disaster. The plane apparently hit flocks of birds after take off and damaged the engines. The pilot and co-pilot attempted to return to the nearest airport but couldn't make it so they had to land in the Hudson River. Witnesses said it was a perfect landing and all 155 people survived. All of the rescue personnel performed their jobs remarkably well. If you have to be in a crash it sounds like this pilot is the man to be flying your plane. With a 20 year career in the Air Force flying fighter planes, a 30 year career with US Airways and a variety of even more very impressive credentials he was the man for the job. A Facebook page was created for him before the day was even over! It was so very nice to hear something good in the news for a change.