My love hate relationship with winter
So let me start off by saying I have a strong dislike for the cold and snow!!! Yet here I am, someone who hates the winter went ahead and moved three hundred miles more north instead of south….but I couldn’t be more in love with our home and property regardless of where it is. So I am going to ramble on a bit about everything I love about winter ( short list ) and the stuff I absolutely loath about winter. Lets start with the things that I love about winter, sense it is a shorter list. My most favorite is playing and sledding with the kids in the snow!! Our property is on the side of a mountain so naturally our yard is sloped, which happens to make sledding, and snowboarding extra fun cause we don’t have to leave the property to go have some fun!! ( leaving the property isn’t always an easy task in the winter)
Our kids living their best lives in the snow
Our oldest loves to snowboard and this years winter has been a wacky one for sure and haven’t had much snow till now, so super excited to see him back out and practicing again. The other two boys pick up a snowboard every now and then but one has a blast just digging in the snow, eating icicles, and sledding and the other will go up and down the hill over and over again till he cant feel his legs anymore. And our daughter she just started liking sledding and figured out the tuck and roll before you hit something, so that has made it way more fun for her. But most of the time she likes to eat snow and follow me around with which ever chores I have going on. The next thing I love is the ever changing mountains here. Yes they change in the fall with all the colors of the season change, but I’m talking all winter the mountains are ever changing. Everyday they look different, one day they reach the sky bare branches, longing for warmth and new life. The next they are covered in a quilt of snow, sparkling in the sun, every day after is always different all winter long.
Our beautiful ever changing mountains
That’s pretty much all I like about winter…now what I dislike. For starters its cold….i would much rather keep cool on blistering day than try and stay warm when its freezing. And don’t get me started on keeping little kids warm and happy during it all. Getting three little kids dressed to go outside in the dead of winter is excruciating, and then the constant fixing of the gloves or getting snow out the back of their necks and boots, then the cold hands cause their gloves are now wet from not staying tucked into their snow coats. And then there is coming back in the house!!!! Oh my coming back in the house is the absolute worst part, snow gets everywhere! Ice and snow balls stashed away in the hem of their pants and coats, covered from head to toe in snow that end up all over the floor in melted puddles no matter how much I try and brush them off before they come in. It all just takes so much longer in the winter, I feel as if we spend more time getting ready and then undressed then we actually spend outside!! ( definitely not true but it sure feels that way 80% of the time ) Now lets talk snow removal, aside from this winter cause the weather has been so god damned difficult all year we are moving snow at least 5 days a week. This year has been a little different we haven’t really had much snow until the last couple weeks but before that it was rain and mud. Rain and mud in December where I live….not really a thing in the last 4 winters here. But now its back to regular snow removal and It takes up so much time, like half of the day we get outside I am usually shoveling, snow blowing, scrapping, chipping away at ice, or melting ice balls off horses legs, and shoveling frozen shit.
Some of our snow shenanigans
The first half of our day is homeschool and all I want after that is to hang out with them and get the chores done but NOOOOO I gotta move snow again! Another thing is frozen water buckets…..yup if you have, have had, or spent anytime on a farm in the winter you have delt with this. It’s a multiple times a day thing to do on the farm to make sure all the animals have water. And one of our stupid ducks had a great plan sometime after I went out and fed lunch to the animals and do water that he wanted to go for a swim in the horse’s water bucket on the freaking coldest day we had had so far this year. So, when I made it out to feed dinner found the poor thing stuck half frozen in the water, with one of his legs frozen solid. I put him in my coat and brought him in the house so he could thaw out for the night. He seems to be doing well so far, a little limp still, but he is happy to be back with his girls.
Our drake that got himself stuck in a water bucket, and our sweet baby girl keeping and eye on him
I’m writing this on a rant because we have had one heck of a last couple weeks, and the weather has just been ticking me off, so this was nice to write and get it off my mind. I was working on another blog and having some writers block and my husband said, “why don’t you write a blog on winter?” and what do you know here I am ranting on all the things that are currently frustrating me at the moment of all things winter!! I am positive I am not the only one who deals with these winter struggles and frustrations yet still loves the beauty, peace, and rewards this life has to offer. I love our home so very much and I am blessed to have everything we do and be able to live the way we do regardless of weather or any other struggle that we have encountered or will encounter. I know the reward of it all is worth more than its weight in gold. My advice to you is that stuff happens, always has always will, you need to learn that no matter how hard you try to evade these situations they are inevitable, and we need to make the best of them. (easier said than done) Slow down, take a step back to simpler times, enjoy the littlest things that life has to offer, and they will leave you with the biggest memories and the fullest heart.
Our home