Never snows but it pours

It has been nothing but snow and rain here since Tuesday afternoon. Though there's still plenty left from the big snowstorm on Wednesday, the new snow always turns to rain before it gets the chance to accumulate. And the snow we have is no longer the light powdery stuff we've come to appreciate here, but is more like British snow, wet and heavy.

It's not great for sledding, but we do our best:

Every picture tells a story

A few more pictures from our recent Lake Placid adventure. I think they speak for themselves:

Animal house

Here are a couple more photos from... was it really only Monday?

We found this mighty snowbeast out on Mirror Lake - an impressive piece of sculpture, but what d'you think it's meant to be?

Whatever, it doubled as a rather nice igloo.

Frosty the Sewnman

In the end we had drizzle followed by about an hour of snow followed by persistent heavy rain for the rest of the day. I was teaching at Five Rivers again. The half of the lesson spent in the snow was great, but once the rain set in people's hair, jeans and spirits dampened considerably and I don't think I've ever seen a group of children happier to get back to their school bus.

In the afternoon I had to pull a sewing project together in time for the after-school class (which has switched from Mondays to Thursdays). In celebration of the recent weather we made little fellows like this.

Diggin' it

We woke to find that about eight inches of snow had fallen over night - and it was still snowing. Wet, heavy snow that weighed down the trees and was a bit of a nightmare to shovel. But anyway, at long last, a snowstorm worthy of the name!

Needless to say it was officially a snow day - I think every school in the region was closed. However by lunchtime the snow tapered off into rain, and a fair amount of the settled stuff melted over the course of a relatively warm afternoon. The ground still looks pretty snowy, mind you.

Now we're on tenterhooks wondering what the next couple of days might bring. I've been checking various weather websites, each telling a completely different story. Will we get heavy snow followed by pouring rain? Or a light drizzle? Additional snow accumulation of 3 to 5 inches, or a mere dusting?

It is, apparently, anyone's guess - care to take a punt?

Life lessons

I started the day at Five Rivers with a fine challenge - teach winter tracking and snow shoeing to a group of 5th graders, but with no snow to teach on. Hmm.

In the end it all went ok. The kids tried on the snowshoes, but we didn't actually go anywhere in them. We took an ordinary hike instead and found plenty of animal signs other than tracks - a red squirrel's food store, hidey holes, beaver chews... One girl was thrilled to catch a glimpse of a vole, and we all enjoyed seeing deer and a lone goose.

They were city kids, and some aspects of nature were too much for them - deer scat for one thing, and the thought of reaching inside a vole tunnel. But I think they had a fun time. When I asked them each what new thing they'd learnt today they came up with various good responses, the most heartfelt being "Never eat yellow snow". I don't know about you, but I call that a result.

A few snowflakes fell on us as we explored, but it was only when the lesson ended that the snow started falling in earnest. At one point in the afternoon I went out to shovel the drive - and this is how it looked approximately sixty seconds later. It isn't snowing right now, but more is expected...

Winter games

After yesterday's trip to the Wild Center we spent last night back in Lake Placid. We made extensive use of the hotel's swimming pool, and had fun on Mirror Lake again - though not boating this time.

There was more outdoor skating in the afternoon on the Oval - the speed-skating circuit from the 1980 Winter Olympics. It was wonderful to skate with views of surrounding mountains and under blue skies and bright sunshine.

Where the wild things are

I've been wanting to visit the Wild Center in the Adirondacks for quite a while - today was the day.

What a great place! Dramatic building, beautifully presented exhibits, plenty of hands-on fun. And otters!

Nice skating

Today has mainly revolved around skating. The Girl had her lesson at 1pm, then asked to go back for the public skate session later in the afternoon.

Public skate on a Saturday is a bit hectic and not entirely relaxing - it's a complete mixture of first-timers, speed skaters and everything in between. You never know who you're going to run into - sometimes literally. Tiny boys in ice-hockey helmets come zipping round your ankles and teenagers fall across your path. There's no practising tricks, just head in one direction and keep your wits about you.

Despite all the hazards, the Girl and I skated our way round and round for an hour without incident. I really enjoy watching my daughter skate. She has no desire to perform or take exams, but she loves to be on the ice for the sheer pleasure of it and it's great to see her so happy.

No parking

A worrying rumour that has been doing the rounds for a couple of days was sadly confirmed today. Thacher Park, of Indian Ladder Trail fame, is slated to close. And not just Thacher, 40 other parks across New York state face closure, along with several historic sites.

The State Governor and the Commissioner for Parks have issued a joint statement explaining the need for these drastic measures: New York's budget deficit is now so vast that painful cutbacks are necessary across the board. If schools and nursing homes have to take budget cuts, parks and historic sites must too.

I am very sad about this news. Our family has had many adventures in Thacher Park - in summer, fall and winter. It's a beautiful place. I fully support the protests being organised against the closure - but alas I'm not hopeful that they'll have much effect.

Oh, Albany...

Yesterday the Man and I had a good laugh over this. We share it with you now, and if you can think of a worse song-for-a-city (or village?) we'd love to know about it.

Enjoy!

Bright on beach

The Girl had a great time on her recent trip to Long Island. She and her hosts visited the snowy beach and managed about half an hour there before the bracing conditions proved too much. Judging by the photos, conditions were also extremely bright - I've adjusted the contrast a little.

A white birthday

It started snowing about an hour before the Man set off for work this morning. It's still snowing now. Perhaps because of the anti-climax of last week's snow-that-never-really-happened, the local weather forecasters have played down today's event, to the extent of barely mentioning it. One online forecast promised a meagre "less than one inch accumulation", but it was more than four inches deep last time I looked.

It has meant an indoor-day for one newly-turned eight-year-old, but I've heard no complaints. With new toys (thank you, kind relatives!) to play with, in particular some additions to his Playmobil water zoo, he and the Girl have been busy all day playing Zoo Tycoon - "live action" version.

Tin can alley

We took a load of empty seltzer cans to the supermarket the other evening.

In order to encourage recycling, drinks containers here come with a 5c returnable deposit. Rather than hand them in to a person in exchange for money, there is a mechanised return system. In the lobby of the supermarket there's a row of machines labelled for glass, plastic or cans. You pop your container in, the machine rolls it around until it can read the barcode, then sucks it to the back where it drops out of sight and a small screen tells you how much you are owed. How simple and convenient!

Yeah, right. Half the time the machine can't read the barcode and spits the can back at you. Or if you try to hurry it, it flashes grumpy messages at you, such as "One at a time!" and "Don't throw!" and "No profanities!"

After half an hour of trying to feed our machine, using up heaven knows how much electricity in our effort to do right by the planet, we were still left with a boxful of cans that it wouldn't accept. Luckily, a man is employed to hang around by the machines to sort out such problems. He gave us a store credit note for 37 cans, opened up the machine and tipped in the empties in one swift electricity-saving move.

Turtle recall

The three of us (the Girl is still away on Long Island) made a trip this afternoon to the Emma Treadwell Thacher Nature Center at Thompson's Lake. We observed a red squirrel - possibly the same one we saw here at the same time last year. We were the only visitors, so had the full attention of the Center's friendly staff-member. She answered our questions about bees, told us tales of mink and weasels and identified the bird of prey (a sharp-shinned hawk) that temporarily frightened all the littler birds away from the feeding tables.

One member of our party had been reluctant to return to this excellent place, but even he was soon won over, especially when given the chance to feed the resident turtles.




There's a good deal more snow up around Thacher than where we live (it's getting decidedly patchy in our area), and Thompson's Lake was definitely looking well frozen.

Treadmill potato

The Man writes...the arrival of the Vancouver Olympics probably means I shall be spending a lot more time down the gym in the next two weeks. This is partly the inspiration of the world's finest athletes, but mainly because each machine has its own TV and we have no TV at home.

Regular readers may remember that I recently won the ski jump gold medal on the 90m hill at Lake Placid (even though there was no snow), so I was interested to see today's competition. Unfortunately, NBC records the whole event and then shows it in four minute chunks between endless adverts, so merely to watch the top ten jumpers I had to be on the treadmill for a full three miles! But it was worth it; the performance of Swiss winner Simon Ammann -a Harry Potter look alike in the commentator's opinion - could fairly be described as awesome.

Meanwhile the Girl has headed down south for a couple of days to "the island" (Long Island) with her favourite surrogate family in search of snow (and probably TV viewing of a different kind).

Friday ski-day

It was a good afternoon for skiing - not too cold, bright sunshine, just a little more snow than last week to make the going smoother. The only damage I incurred was deliberately self-inflicted - kicking myself for forgetting to bring a camera.

There was no lesson today, just free skiing round the trails and up and down the hills. Both my kids did really well, not falling much and generally having a good time, although the smaller one was pretty tired after an hour and half. My legs are feeling it tonight, too, I have to admit.

We have the Presidents' Week vacation ahead of us now, while in the UK I think you are heading into half-term. How will you be spending the time off?

Mother of the year

A teaching assignment at Five Rivers this morning had been rearranged, so I was planning to spend the day reading (in a desperate attempt to finish a book in time for the book group meeting I'd forgotten was happening tomorrow). In the end I got distracted by numerous other things - a meeting here, a visit there - and didn't get any reading done at all.

But at least I was comfortably back in the house before the children were due home... Then a phone call came from school: the receptionist, apologetically reminding me that I was supposed to be collecting my son while my daughter was at computer club. Oops. Back in the car.

He didn't seem too traumatized by having been abandoned, I have to say, and happily tucked into a huge cookie and huger strawberry smoothie while we waited for his sister.

Feel free to share your own latest and best mother/father/relative-of-the-year moments in Comments.

Not much to write home about

Well, I don't know. I'd got myself quite excited at the prospect of maybe as much as six inches of fresh snow. In the end we barely got a dusting round here, less than an inch. Frankly I feel cheated.

I was supposed to teach some 7th graders snow-shoeing at Five Rivers, but their school cancelled at the last minute (because they thought it was going to be too snowy - ho hum). So instead I spent some time at the ice-rink, worked on some of my crafty projects and prepared for a fair trade meeting this evening. The latter went well, and we have some exciting plans for events in the months ahead.

Turn, turn, turn

I took myself to the ice-rink today. It was unusually busy for a weekday (i.e. more than three people on the ice), and there was quite a jolly atmosphere. Some young kids were skidding about. One of them admired my backwards crossovers, so that felt rather good.

I mainly concentrated on turning on one foot. Over and over and over again, I got quite absorbed in it. After nearly an hour and a half I wasn't doing too badly. I am forever fascinated by the physics of skating, how the slightest shift of weight can make all the difference between a sweet turn and a staggering stumble. And the psychology of it too - confidence is more than half the battle.

Everyone is watching the weather tonight - it's on the turn, too, and we're finally due some more snow. We'll just be on the outer-edges of the storm so we're not expecting "snowmaggedon", but it'll be nice to see a fresh coat of white again.

Knit one, purl one

I did various things today, but in the quiet between-times I knitted. I bought some gorgeous wool yarn (Japanese, hand-spun and dyed) back at the end of the summer and have only just got round to doing something with it. It's two different skeins, hence the stripes. The colours change as I go along and it's all very pleasing.

Super Bowl of snacks

It was another of those days for not hanging about too long out of doors - perishing cold with additional merciless wind-chill. No snow, however - once again it has passed us by, dumping on DC and Pennsylvania instead.

The Girl got invited out to a swimming party, so that's where she got her exercise for the day. The rest of us took ourselves down to Five Rivers for a brief scamper round a couple of trails. There were some stunning ice-formations, frozen streams and intriguing animal tracks, but we couldn't stand still long to admire anything.

Tonight the Man is out at a friend's house watching the Super Bowl and possibly eating his own weight in snackfood, which seems to be the principal object of the event. At least watching it on someone's telly means that tomorrow he'll be able to join in the Super Bowl conversation at work - which won't be about the game, but about the commercials shown during the breaks. That's the other major attraction of this sporting fixture, apparently.

Go figure, as they say.

Festival of ice

The Man writes...the day started with an early kids' party in honour of a rather dubious festival called "International Ice Cream for Breakfast Day". For our children this meant a dribble of ice cream beneath an icky mountain of marshmallows, sprinkles and gummi bears. I guess for me the equivalent indulgence would be International Brussel Sprouts for Breakfast Day, but to my knowledge no-one has invented that yet. (Why not?)


Between skating lesson, playdates and a rather exciting evening watching the England-Wales rugby game (thanks Exiles!) I managed to slip out to the annual Grafton Lakes Winterfest. After memorable family visits in 2008 and 2009 I felt this was a tradition that had to be maintained. As usual it was brutally cold, invigorating and altogether rather wonderful.

Cross over lack of snow

I was the only one at my skating lesson today (the other member of the class was sick) so I had the teacher and the entire ice-rink to myself. I made some good progress, especially with backwards crossovers, which I could already do but not very well. The teacher diagnosed what was going wrong, we corrected it and wow - what a difference.

Sliding on to the afternoon, there was almost as much ice to deal with at the cross-country skiing venue as at the rink. It had reopened today after accumulating just enough snow over the past week - only just enough, though. Conditions were rather treacherous ("It's evil snow!" claimed one skier), and when anyone fell (which was often) landings were hard. Yet the kids and I still managed to have a good time.

Alright pet?

Another beautifully sunny but very cold day. I spent it tinkering with some ideas I'm working on.

The Girl goes to the after-school computer club on a Thursday (just what she needs - more time on the computer), so I picked up her brother and took him to a nearby cafe and shops while we waited for her to finish. We ended up in Petsmart, admiring the fish, the hamsters, guinea-pigs and budgerigars. Though I've no intention of getting us a pet at present (we still have Pete of course), or possibly ever, I'm interested to know what readers recommend. Do you have a pet, do you like it, and what (if any) input do your kids have into its upkeep and general well-being?

Through a well-known social networking site I also made contact with an old university friend from Durham.

Family gathering

It's the Man's birthday. I baked a cake. The kids decorated it. Then we all ate it - yum.

Haven't we been here before?

It's Groundhog Day once again. Punxutawney Phil says we're in for another six weeks of winter. I'll keep you posted.

I started the day with a fair trade presentation to parents at school. Unfortunately it wasn't well attended, as is often the way with first-thing-in-the-morning events. But the few who did come were interested and enjoyed watching this short video, and one person is going to try and persuade her synagogue to take up FT, so I didn't feel it was time wasted.

Later in the morning I took myself off to the ice-rink for a skate around. I'm trying to practise turns on one foot at the moment. Though I understand the principle I'm not getting on very well at all. But I've gone through this with almost every other skating manoeuvre I've had to learn - I'm not ready to give up just yet.

Sew solid crew

I spent part of this morning exploring an interesting fair trade website, Pa Pa Paa - all about cocoa-growing communities in Ghana. An excellent resource, especially for any school interested in learning about this sort of thing.

Then I headed out to the shops for a look around (there are some birthdays coming up). From town I took myself to school to do some library work and teach my sewing class. That was bedlam as usual, but pleasing too. Last week some of the kids sketched their own designs for things to sew, and today they started making them - with some great results. Though most of them don't appear to sit still long enough to learn anything, apparently they do.