Snow Day

Today it snowed enough that they let school out a couple of hours early and Camille didn't have to go to afternoon kindergarten. I felt like I had all of the time in the world since I didn't have to get her ready and out to the bus after lunch. I pulled out our wheat grinder and made whole wheat flour, oat flour, buckwheat flour and 7-grain flour. We have some heavy-duty baking to do now!

After Caleb came home from school, we all put on our snow clothes (including my pink snowpants left over from sixth grade) to shovel the driveway and play.

Chloe was hard at work. As she shoveled, she sang a song: "I love shoveling! I have a shovel! I love shoveling!"


Camille loves the snow.


The big kids head to the sledding hill next door.


Playing in the snow is hard work.

Sister Fun

The other day the girls played outside in the snow and then warmed up inside with some hot cocoa.


Later they were so warm they pretended they were at the beach! Here they are in a "boat" we picked up at the store.


It's so fun to see the girls getting along.

Mama's Helper

Chloe helped me make some cookies the other day. Here she is - hard at work.

Barbecue

One of the few things I will admit to missing about North Carolina is the food. Not all of the food, but definitely barbecue. I was in college the first time someone told me about it and I didn't get what the fuss was about. When I thought "barbecue" I thought of hamburgers and hot dogs as in we're having a barbecue. I couldn't have been more wrong.

There's nothing like a big plate of Eastern North Carolina barbecue - smoked pulled pork with a vinegar based barbecue sauce - with some slaw and hush puppies.

Rob found an oil drum last spring and had these grand plans to make a pig cooker so we could have a big pig pickin' for his 30th birthday. That hasn't happened yet, but I did pick up a big hunk of pork at the store this week and decided to surprise Rob with some barbecue.

Before we left NC our friends gave us a cookbook featuring the best recipes from NC. We busted it out today to see how we could make barbecue sans pig cooker and were excited to find we could make it in the crock pot. It's not quite the same, but pretty close.

Tomorrow my mission is to make it to the store for a head of cabbage so I can make slaw to go with it for dinner tomorrow. We're going to consider this a test run for the next time we have company over for dinner.

In the spirit of barbecue, I'll leave you with a little video. This was the song Rob and I were singing as we worked in the kitchen today. Enjoy!

Cute kid

There has been a distinct lack of Caleb on this blog lately (not that I've been a prolific blogger by any stretch of the imagination), so I thought I'd remedy that with this gem.

Enjoy!

Our Latest Drama or How We Almost Could Have Died

So Thursday morning I woke up with a headache. I'm not prone to headaches, but I had felt a sore throat coming on the day before and assumed that I was coming down with something. Considering I had had a particularly poor night of sleep, with more than one child waking me up, I was not surprised to feel so poorly.

I didn't get a chance to mention it to Rob before he mentioned he had a headache. I thought that was a weird coincidence and figured we were coming down with the same bug. Then Caleb woke up not feeling well, also claiming a headache.

I figured the best thing for all of us would be to go back upstairs and spend the day in bed. At the very last second (literally), Caleb decided he really, really wanted to go to school. I'm so glad that he did. It wasn't until re-entering my house that I realized we had a problem.

I made my neighbor come to the door and sniff - she confirmed my suspicions. We had a gas leak of some sort in our house.

The source of the headaches? Carbon monoxide poisoning. Awesome, right? (By the way, we did have a carbon monoxide detector in the house...it just didn't go off.)

Anyway, I called the gas company who sent someone out to check. He came in with his gas reader machine thingamajig and said, "Yup. You have a problem." The CO levels were reading 60 in our kitchen and 200 down in the basement by the furnace. (Anything over 50 will make a healthy adult sick from what I read.) He figured the problem was a cracked furnace and suggested that it be replaced since it was more than 20 years old. The nice part about renting is that we don't have to worry about fixing things like this when they break.

Our landlord got a furnace guy to come out to check out the situation that afternoon. The furnace guy decided it needed to be replaced and said it might not be able to be replaced until Monday. (Remember it's January in New England...Brrr!) We took the landlord up on his offer to pay for a hotel room for us.

We spent the night at a pretty nice little extended stay place not far from where Rob works and the kids were thrilled to get to go on "cation", as Chloe puts it.

The good news is that the furnace guy was able to get and install a new furnace Friday. I spent the day at our neighbors' house but was excited to come home to a warm house.

So, there you have it. The short version of the story since I think I'm getting carpal tunnel.

Be sure to check your carbon monoxide detectors. We'll be getting new ones ASAP!