Snow Days

The kids will likely be out of school all week.  The roads are still pretty crummy and not very safe for school buses to be out running.  One of the downsides to working from home is I don't get snow days (as rare as they may be).  But one of my conference calls got canceled yesterday and I was able to take the kids out sledding with friends over the lunch hour.  They have never been sledding before and had an absolute blast!

There was rough housing among the boys while the adults decided on the best hill in the neighborhood.

We don't have any sleds, so Owen chose to slide on his belly half the time, rather than waiting on friends to share their sleds.

He also tried surfing down while standing up.  My brave boy.

Someone brought a real surf board, which was a favorite for adults to ride down on with multiple kids on their back.  Chloe was THRILLED to get a chance on riding down on top of Mr. Shannon and several girls.  (This is the same Mr. Shannon who spotted Jezzie Monday morning and called me :)

Chloe also hitched a ride while squatting on the back of a sled and hanging on tight to Ms. April.  Note the tutu flying out behind her!

After two days back at home, Jezzie was finally brave enough to venture outside.  But she stayed close to the back door on her first trip outside.  

These are some of the beads that have been cleaned, but there are gobs more waiting in the kitchen sink.

This is my snow-covered bead photography studio.  The sun has melted some of the six inches that were originally piled on top of my tiles, but not all.

And this is one of Little Horse's favorite snooze spots in the house.

Hope to have more bead pics to share with you tomorrow!

Snow to Shorts!

This was last weekend.  We got three inches of snow Friday afternoon and through Saturday morning.  It was a winter wonderland that Atlanta rarely sees.  The kids loved it.  We made a snowman as tall as me (which isn't saying much, considering I'm a shorty.  but whatever).

And this was this weekend before lunch time. It got up to 65. Thank you Spring for giving us a taste of your warmth so soon after a snow and weeks of temps in the 30s and 40s!

This was a humongously tall tree outside the hospital where my Grandma landed herself this weekend. Apparently they didn't give her a strong enough antibiotic last Tuesday for her bladder infection, so she came back severely dehydrated and feeling all-around wretched. I love this tree. I do not love the smell of hospitals or their handsoap. I was reminded of this as the smells hit me before I even walked through the front doors. Hospital smells churn my stomach and amp me up for crisis mode. She was released this afternoon and is so very happy to be back home and feeling better.  After I snapped this picture, I high-tailed it down to my monthly Southern Flames meeting and watched Caitlyn Hyde demo one of her special techniques.  I also had the pleasure of meeting Mallory, also known as Rosebud101 at the meeting.  She flew down to Atlanta for Caitlyn's class and came to the meeting.  Don't ask me why I didn't pull out my camera to snap a pic of the two of us.  By 9pm, my mind was really shot for the day and I just wasn't thinking.  :(  I was so excited to meet her and thrilled she was just as genuine and sweet in person as on her blog!

Here are the kids making good use of the box for our new ottoman (which I love!) that doubles as a fort and a grass sled.  Mine are on the left, sporting their new soccer duds which they purchased earlier in the morning when Todd took them out to Sports Authority to buy the shin guards and soccer balls.  They were so excited about their new gear they had to wear it all day!

These are the roses that Todd gave me last weekend for Valentine's Day which I realized this morning have been the cause of my allergies and complete inability to breathe for the last week.  Dangit, I thought it was only lillies and other beautifully smelly flowers that shut down my nose and sinuses.  So these are out on the back porch now.  :(  I'm slowly starting to breathe better, but I expect it will be a few more days before the house is cleared of their presence.

And yesterday, my husband was a love and let me sleep in while he took care of the kids.  I made it until 8am before I got up, but that's a good hour and a half after I normally get up on the weekends.  He took the kids out of the house and gave me loads of time to enjoy some peace and play with fire.  Here are the 87 beads I made yesterday.  I had the best time on the torch!  The glass was flowing exactly like I wanted and new ideas were coming to me like they haven't in a long time.  FUN!  

I even got all of the beads cleaned & photographed today.  Now I just need to go through and crop all the pics so I can share the beads with you and get them listed in my Etsy shop.  Woot!

Travel

No, I don't have any new bead pics to share. I'm sorry. I did make 40+ beads on Friday night. And I did make another 40+ beads yesterday. I even got all the beads from Friday night cleaned out and ready to photograph. The beads from yesterday are still on mandrels standing up on display on my kitchen window sill. I'll get the pics taken next weekend. When I get back home from California.

If only I had known that leaving the house at 10am today was a fruitless decision. Then I would have stayed home. Snuggled with the kids. Snuggled with my wonderful husband who offered to keep me company while I sat at the torch & melted glass the other night. And taken bead pics on the back porch while the sky was white with snow.


Instead, I stood in line at Hartsfield for four hours. FOUR HOURS, people! For just a few inches of snow that has all melted, but single-handedly destroyed the entire flight schedule at the Atlanta airport and canceled all flights for today. They changed me to a non-stop flight that leaves at 8:25am tomorrow. Which means I need to get up & leave before the crack of dawn. In fact, I'll need to be at the AIRPORT before the crack of dawn. So I can wait again because there will likely be ice somewhere in Georgia causing problems. Not necessarily at Hartsfield, but somewhere. They have already started closing schools in/around Atlanta. So when you think of me tomorrow, I'll just be waiting...