A surreal March

Remember when you could chew your toes? No? Well, this picture will help ensure that Stephen does! Stephen has turned into quite the chewer--just about anything he can get into his mouth, he will gnaw on (including toes!). We hope this is a sign that he'll get teeth sooner than his older siblings--both were toothless until well over a year old.


Speaking of older siblings--we feel blessed that Stephen's just love their little brother, and do not seem threatened by him...at least not yet, as he hasn't gotten to the stage of competing for toys. On the contrary, all of their old baby toys that Stephen now plays with and chews on have renewed interest for Kenny and Beth. Beth in particular seems to dote on Stephen--this picture has her "reading" him a story...



Stephen is also like his "Bumpa" (grandfather Rich) in that he loves to lay in front of the fireplace and watch the wood burn. He will often be fussy and squirmy, but if we have a fire going and lay him down, he will be entranced with the flames, and often will drift asleep while basking in the warmth of the fire...




Okay, now for the surreal part. After the surprise of Favre's retirement has begun to wear off, other weird events start happening...like 6 inch snowfalls in Arkansas in March! When they first started talking about this storm system earlier this week, they hinted at the possibility of a few snow flakes in south Arkansas. Mind you, we have not had accumulating snow every winter we've lived down here--once every few years, it seems, we'll get maybe an inch of snow that sticks around for a few hours before it melts. As the week wore on, the snow chances didn't change much for us, but other parts of Arkansas started seeing their projected snowfall totals increase. For example, Russellville (about 3 hours to the northwest of us), received over a foot of snow early in the week from a storm that brought us only rain storms.

The snowstorm finally arrived in northwestern Arkansas by Thursday evening, and they immediately began shutting down events and closing schools. We weren't supposed to get anything until later on Friday, as this storm was a slow mover. This did help accentuate the snowfall totals in other parts of the state--some locations in the Ozark Mountains got a foot and a half of snow--in addition to what they had gotten earlier in the week!

By midday on Friday, we started seeing snow in the light rain and sleet that had started falling a few hours earlier. Nothing too impressive, but they decided that morning to close school early, so Hope made arrangements to pick Kenny up at school at 2 p.m. By 1 p.m., it was snowing fairly hard, and it started to accumulate. I decided to come home early from work to help watch the kids (and to enjoy the snow--I won't lie about that!). Hope got Kenny, and shortly thereafter they were outside playing in the snow, throwing snowballs, building snowmen, etc.:


A Packer snowman in honor of the career of Brett Favre, perhaps?

We figured this snow event would be like the others we'd seen down here--a short burst of heavy snow, followed by quick melting...only this time, the short burst continued into the night! It was a heavy, wet snow, which brought down a number of small limbs and help spark a bunch of power outages across the state, including one in a nearby neighborhood. Our friends Scott and Mandy lost power, and had been told it may be a day or more before it'd be restored, so we invited them to bring their two young boys Beau and Gabe over to spend the night (fortunately for them, they got power back before long, and were able to spend the night in their own beds).

By the time the storm ended, we had probably gotten at least a half-foot of wet snow, which left a beautiful (at least for these Yankees) white landscape:

This picture is of our neighbor's house across the street, and the next one is of Hope inspecting her snow removal efforts from the previous evening...

The roads are ice covered and wet, slippery in spots, but generally okay to drive. The kids have been playing outside as much as they can, which is great, and we've enjoyed the sight of fresh snow--Hope told me this morning that she felt "renewed". I know that our families back in Wisconsin and Michigan have seen more than enough snow and cold this winter, but we're enjoying it thoroughly! Unfortunately, I doubt if any of this will be left when Mom and Dad visit later this week--we're supposed to be back in the 50s by Tuesday...