snowpocalypse 2011 (aka atlantartica/snowmaggedon)

Although colder weather seems to have returned today, yesterday was a glorious and sunny warm (50 degrees!) day here in Atlanta.  I love my family, but six days snowed in with toddlers and husband was a bit much.  (More about our storm prep and photos of our yard coming soon.)

Emerson handed me a book yesterday and opened it to page 98. The book was "Yesterday's Atlanta" by Franklin M. Garrett (an autographed copy, no less) and the page had a photo of the Ice Storm of February 1905. Appropriate, no?

And I think the quote on the page nailed it: "The Ice Storm of February 1905 stopped the city dead in its tracks. Trolleys were out of business, schools closed, telegraph and telephone lines broke, trees twisted, trains and mails delayed. Suffering and inconvenience stalked the streets. Here is a view of Piedmont Avenue, between Pine Street and North Ave., then all residential." (By residential, they mean ALL TREES!)

On a side note, I told Emerson the book was about Atlanta, which is where we live. So now when you ask her where we live, she says, "Lanta!" She says that Nana, however, lives in a "hole" which I think is supposed to mean "home," so we're trying to convince her to say "mountains" instead.

Photos of Atlanta's past snowstorms can be found here, including a photo of the 1905 storm.

raising them right

Hadley considers her manicure before beginning.

Emerson gets involved with her work.

 

Always color-coordinate your tools.  You can't go wrong with purple!

Check your work!

Daddy is a good helper, too.

Hadley works on the base.

A job well done!

dreaming of spring

Winter is not my season, folks.  If not for the invention of down everything and SmartWool, I would be pretty miserable.  I discovered these photos taken by a neighbor of our house and garden last summer for an East Point website, and it's given me hope that warm weather, green leaves, and flowers are not too far away.

Photos courtesy of Matthew Sweitzer.

the biggest new year's resolution ever

Nothing like ending the year in a big way...like by handing in a resignation letter to your job (career!) of 10+ years.  I don't have a new job lined up, other than the--as a friend put it--"double time" job of staying home with the girls full-time.  Give me a few months non-stop with twins in the Terrible Twos, and I just might be looking for a job that's not only full-time, but maybe with something along the lines of 80% travel. 

We plan to see how it goes for six months or so, while I stay home with the girls and maybe try to go back to school for the few classes I need to be certified as a school media specialist.  I also plan on writing to try to bring in a bit of extra money.  We've cut back on expenses, but know we have a long way to go before we can survive on one salary...and we have three weeks to get there.  I'm starting to see why we ate odd things for dinner when I was a kid.  They never seemed odd as a kid; only later as an adult did I start to wonder why we sometimes had toast with gravy (and a bit of roast beef) or oyster stew (can you find a cheaper meal than a can of oysters and some milk and butter?!).  I'm sure my parents were thrilled to find out that I didn't actually like the oysters, but was content to drink the milk part (not realizing it was milk, which I hated as a kid).  At any rate, I'm now (as I consider our cheaper meal and grocery options) discovering that I like what the most frugal would consider "extras" in my food--veggies in my eggs, for example.  I read cookbooks with disapproval when the ingredient list is long and includes things that are not only infrequently used in the kitchen but pricey, too.

My other New Year's resolution is to be more positive in my outlook and my actions.  We'll see how that goes after a week of ramen, gravy and toast, and plain old eggs ;)