Andy and Darcy’s Blog

It’s deceptively cold outside. You may think that the snow is melting, but you are wrong. It is frozen.

We have piles and piles of snow. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine if you lift in a tropical climate (like Kansas).

Here are a few pictures we’ve taken over the past few months.

Sorry, I have realized that this video doesn’t so much work in Safari. I know it works in firefox.

It doesn’t even work in internet explorer, but don’t get me started. It has become one of my goals to fix this video for all browsers. But seriously, use firefox. It’s just better.

We’ve had a lot of snow. We’ve had to shovel several times, and there was one day that the high was -2. Ugh! Now we’re really happy when it gets up to 20, and then we go outside without coats for short periods of time, just because it is so warm out!!

This is footage from our living room window on the day we had a blizzard warning. Andy and I went home from work early after the blizzard warning was announced, and we worked from home for the rest of the day, just in case the city didn’t have their snow plows out working hard. It was snowing, but the winds were high so that the snow was horizontal. We didn’t get a lot of snow accumulation just because the wind wouldn’t let it settle anywhere. But there were some big drifts in inconvenient places. This video isn’t that exciting and it doesn’t really do justice to the crappy weather, but there is a lot of wind and you can see the snow speeding by. And I wanted to edit a video and post it so here it is.

We spent this Christmas in Michigan with Andy’s family. When we got there, everything was covered in snow, but the next day we got some rain that made all the snow disappear. We spent Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa Carter’s house. Below is a picture I took of everyone as they were about to sit down for Christmas Eve dinner. There is also a picture of the popup book-cards that were gifts from Andy’s grandparents.

We spent Christmas Day with Andy’s parents. We gave Andy’s parents a set of Revereware, and you can see them opening that gift in this picture.

It finally snowed again (a more serious snow) on the day we left.

I take pictures; therefore, I blog. I know there are much more interesting weather stories out there especially for one of my target audiences, but I planned to write this blog when I took pictures on December 2, 2007, so here it is anyway. This is my weather update for those of you who like to hear such things.

It is cold. It has been both colder and warmer than when I took these pictures, but I can tell you now that there is still snow and everything looks pretty much the same. It was the first shoveling of the season, but not the first snow. The snow was topped off by a nice layer of ice so you had to crack it, then shovel. Fun, ya?

The pictures are a little late, but that’s another story in itself. Here are pictures of our pre-Thanksgiving Day dinner in Rochester.

The day started out with a light dusting of snow, our first of the year. And like all pre-Thanksgiving Day dinners, it was cold. This year we fried the turkey in the back yard.

Here are shots of meal time preparation. Andy is carving the 17 lb. turkey.

And here are shots of everyone eating. Our family room was more or less cleared out for this event. This was the first year we tried the “one long table” arrangement. It made me realize how important the passing part of Thanksgiving is.

We’re writing to you from Topeka, Kansas, where there are copious amounts of stuffing in the early phases of preparation. There was a breakfast casserole to keep our strengths up, coffee is being made continually, and I’m sure there are other things going on here that I’m not even aware of. My grandparents have it all under control.

We drove in last night from Rochester. And it is cold. We really were not expecting that. As we drove south, we ran into snow! And ice, but that is a tale of steering into the slides and otherwise being tediously alert. Ugh! But anyways, we are Minnesotans without even an icescraper in the car in the middle of a Kansas winter. Is that totally unprepared or what!

Today we are excited to be eating Thanksgiving food with our family, and we are waiting to watch our fantasy football players get us lots of points. It’s Zane vs. Andy and Ben/Paula vs. Darcy. Go Too Legit to Quit! Go Gryffindors!

And a Happy Thanksgiving to you all!