Home again

Well, we are home again....

Pat and I had a very relaxing weekend. The weather in Two Harbors was spectacular! 47-50 degrees to be exact. We didn't do much of anything except sit in the jacuzzi and relax in the serenity of the very tiny hotel room. But all the same, it was quiet and peaceful.

We happened to go up on one of the busiest snowmobile weekends of the year it seemed. The hotel parking lot was jam-packed with snowmobile trailers and just outside our window were parked numerous snowmobiles. Busy! They couldn't have asked for a better weekend. Pat and I checked out a trail map for snowmobilers and they can go for miles. One guy we talked to rode over 300 miles in two days and said that he was definately feeling it. Man, how we wanted to rent a snowmobile or two and go for a trail ride. What fun that would've been. We really outta get us some of those.

Pat and I poked around Duluth most of the day Saturday checking out the 'hidden city'. Funny, we have been to Duluth enough to know street names but just discovered the real Duluth. LOL Usually we spend all of our time by the Lake and are oblivious to the life that lurks just up the hill. Wow, I was very impressed! And each and every time we go up north, Pat and I dream about one day living in that area even though the winters are long and colder than what we have here. Makes no sense to me why we would want to live further north when in the winter I just want to move to somewhere warm. But we are drawn to that place just like many others I'm sure.

Sunday we lazily got ready to come home, searched for somewhere to eat, and then met my folks with the kids for dinner later in the day. Sad drive home, neither of us was ready to come home just yet. But as we all know, that is simply unavoidable.

Now that we are home, life has resumed at it's rather sped up pace. Monday we got absolutely dumped on with snow. Pat tackled the roads in the blizzard like conditions while I sat here with our kids watching the snow pile up outside. Holy Cow, did we get snow. At around 7:00am my daughter, myself and Pat began the first round of digging ourselves out so that daycare could get in and Pat could leave. By about 8:30, we had finished that first round of shoveling, I was soaked from the still falling snow and tired and walked in to all of my daycare parents' calls saying that they wouldn't be risking the road conditions so I had a day off.

At about 11:00am, our power went out. The kids and I sat here wondering what we were going to do with ourselves. Amazing how quiet a house is without all the appliances running. We were bored, I was crabby and stressed because I didn't know how long this outage was going to last. By 3:00, we still didn't have our power and the snow was still coming. I decided that after I ate the pizza we ordered for 'linner' that I was going to go start the task of digging us out for a second time. I quick ate and proceeded to worry because our house was getting cold and tried to encourage my kids out to help but they were all bundled under blankets and didn't want to move. Images of taking them to a hotel in the crappy weather started to surface and I figured I best get the driveway done so that we could leave. Pat wasn't due home until 9:00pm so I wanted to help him a little by shoveling what I could.

Because of the morning exertion, my body was worn out and this snow seemed twice as heavy. It was slow going but I got our sidewalk shoveled and began working on the mounds that the snowplow had strategically scraped up at the ends of our driveway. UGH!!! Thank God for neighbors with snowblowers. If not for him, I think I would have collapsed. He came over and did the remainder of what I didn't get to. I would've been shoveling until dark. While I was out shoveling, our power came back on at about 4:15, I could hear the furnace kick on and I let out a huge sigh of relief. All told, we received about a foot and a half of snow in our wonderful little city. And there is rumor that we may get up to another 8 inches tonight....Ummm, really I hope that this will be the last hurrah for the season! I don't mind the snow really, my kids are off of school for the week so it's providing them with something to do with their boredom and it is beautiful just after a snowfall, but man, the digging out part I could do without.

So, it's back to the routine, my visits will be few this week with the kids home and hogging the phone and computer but I managed to squeeze in a little time to put up this post.

Boz, we have the fish tank up and running!!!!!!!!!!! But that is a whole other post.