Decisions, decisions...

I knew I had taken more pictures from Andrew and Andrea's visit!  I found them buried in snow pictures.  So here is Andrew and Dominique hanging out their first night with us and auntie Andrea and Emora doing some initial bonding before their wild shopping spree.

Did I mention once upon a time that Emora read her first word while we were waiting in an optometrist office.  I remembered vividly how very excited I was when Ivan, then Dominique read their first words and I took their picture with their word, so I had to do the same with darling Emora!  She has good pre-reader skills.  We were in another office waiting and there was a huge word staring at us, so I asked her what it said and she answered correctly:  "CANADA".  So I asked her how she knew that's what it said and she said there was a Canada flag by it.  And there was a little Canada flag icon.  I hadn't even noticed it.  Watch out world, here comes Emora and I've got to warn you she's a fiesty one!

This was the storyteller that Dominique and I got to hear the weekend of Emora's birthday outings with auntie and uncle.  She wrote her own stories and made her own illustrations, and also incorporated singing and drumming.  It was so moving and beautiful.

So decisions... the kids are off for a week from school, but it looks like this weekend could be the big melt.  We had had so many amazing days where the frost on the trees was like intricate lace.  It would eventually melt off as the sun shone on it, but sometimes would last quite a while.  It would transform our town and street into a real winter wonderland.

The pine tree is in our yard.  Here I am pointed toward the hill as I stand in our driveway.

Last year, there was quite a bit of flooding.  We didn't get water in our basement, but we also shoveled ice and snow away from the basement windows as the melt occurred and the sump pump ran continuously.

To his credit, Brian has caught flooding into our basement about to happen a couple of times and just now found a drain spout broken with frozen ice, which was allowing the melt to seep towards Ivan's window.

He was up on the roof shoveling snow off today, then he had to shovel it off the back porch.

No one really knows what it will look like this year, it all depends how hot it gets and how fast and how much the soil can hold and lots of other ifs, ands, and buts.

These pictures were taken quite a while back, there is even more snow now.  They say this is the most snow we have ever gotten on record.  That was a lot of shoveling exercise we got!

And the back yard:  here is our snow fort/quinzee.  It's about 3 feet higher and filled with snow right now.

There are several feet of packed snow all in the yard and a huge mountain of snow beside Ivan's window.

Saba enjoying the sunshine.

bye bye ice globes- I'm totally making these again next year.

So we are trying to figure out our Easter plans.  Dominique is sick right now with fever, so my first hopes is that she is better, then we need to figure out if Brian should stay and be on snow melt duty, if so, that will affect the days I can go, since he could sub for me at the bank... lots of uncertainty right now, but I'm so looking forward to the break- and seeing family.  Not sure where the Easter egg hunt will happen though ;)