A Sunnier Version of Sweden

Mother nature hasn't blessed us with much powder this winter; she has been more likely to give us a break from the winter weather with mild temperatures and an occasional thaw in what's been a very moderate season. This past week, though, we had that form of precipitation that shuts things down for at least a little while, even here in Wisconsin: ice. With freezing rain through the night, we woke up last Tuesday to a coating of ice on the trees, driveway, streets and pretty much every surface. The kids had an ice day from school, and I worked form home for a few hours until the streets cleared up enough to get to the office. Despite its hazard, ice makes for a beautiful winter landscape.

The Wisconsin Life!! We are fully embracing it, loving the new adventures we can have in the winter. With the mild winter we've had in Neenah, though, we are now chasing the snow - I'm a frequent reader of the trail reports, and early last week, I decided it was a great opportunity for us to take a weekend up north with an overnight to get some winter fun in. Originally, we had planned on heading to Lake Geneva to meet some friends who would drive up from Chicago for some cross country skiing, but there isn't a snow covered trail to be found in the bottom half of the state! We called an audible and made plans with our friends for a couple of months from now, and then booked a cabin in Oneida County as a landing pad in between our days of fun. We started Saturday out with a three hour drive to Rhinelander, WI , a small town in NE Wisconsin that has an extensive network of local trails! Of all of the websites I've found, this one has the most descriptive and extensiv...

Took a hiatus from the blog, but not from my resolutions! Successfully entering the third month of the year at the end of this week, and so far, still on track with making one new recipe per week! Two Sundays ago, I got to a cookie recipe I had bookmarked the first time I saw it: Cowboy Cookies from the NY Times website. As usual, I gathered all of the ingredients and the kitchen implements I would need to put these together. That's a lot of stuff!! I was so intrigued by the combination of pecans, oatmeal, coconut and chocolate chips. Tell me that doesn't sound amazing! As I added ingredient after ingredient to the mixer, though, I did begin to wonder: is it all going to fit?? Once the base cookie was set, it was time to add the goodies - but the mixing bowl definitely wasn't going to be big enough! I improvised with our pasta bowl, and it turned out to be an inspired choice: easy to mix all of the add-ins and also turned out to be easy to scoop out the cookies to ...

Parenting milestone last Saturday: I took Caroline to the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh to take the ACT. Thankfully I don't have to deal with actually thinking about college yet; this was a part of the Duke TIP program, for which Caroline earned a recommendation from a teacher at Ramay before we left Arkansas. I remember taking the SAT myself in 7th grade; not much came out of it other than beginning to get college brochures long before I was interested in choosing an institution of higher learning, and bragging rights that I did well enough in 7th grade to actually get admitted to some colleges. For Caroline, I would expect about the same outcome, as neither she nor I have much interest in the cost and logistics associated with attending one of the summer programs. I do think, though, that this was an incredible opportunity to be exposed to the college entrance exams, to demystify the test and help her take another step forward to figuring out her future. I'm not in an...

Only one new recipe last week, and it was a good one! This time, I found inspiration from a Facebook group I follow for easy crockpot dinners. Originally planned for the prior week, we didn't get around to it, and when I ended up home sick last Monday, I was glad to have something easy to make that might also be comfort food for a cold night and stuffy head. Chicken Enchilada soup was long on ingredients but short on difficulty; pretty much everything came in a can, except the chicken itself: Put the chicken breasts in the bottom of the crockpot, then mix all of the ingredients together in prep: It didn't have to cook all day; this was a 5-6 hour on low kind of recipe, but as Justin was working, something happened to the electricity and we realized at some point that the crockpot had been turned off. Thank goodness slow cooker soups are so forgiving! We turned it back on and crossed our fingers. We would be eating later than hoped, but at least dinner was still on track...

Last week feels a little bit like a lost week. A week ago Thursday, I felt out of sorts, but chalked it up to having been gone for a few days on work travel and then having a frustrating day at work. Come Friday morning, though, not 24 hours after saying "knock on wood, nobody at my house has gotten sick yet," I could tell the out of sorts was thanks to a cold coming on. I figure I'm pretty lucky it wasn't the fly, but it certainly was "the crud," and I had a croupy cough and head congestion that wouldn't quit I managed to stick it out all day at work, but by late Friday afternoon, all I could think about was going home and crawling under the covers. The cough and corresponding headache stuck around all weekend long; no real fever, and thankfully enough energy to stay upright and get some things done around the house, but no real improvement, either. The whole weekend went by and on Sunday evening, it was obvious I wouldn't be any good to anyone ...

Last Saturday we got a steady snow all day and overnight, for a total of about 6" of beautiful, fluffy Wisconsin winter! It came ahead of an arctic air mass, too, so it's still sticking around many days later. I woke up early Sunday morning and before anyone else was awake, enjoyed the stillness and quiet of the morning and the view from our deck. The deck was covered and the bench in our yard told the tale of the day's snowfall:   The wind chill was well below zero, so I didn't linger long, and with windy conditions expected all day I didn't plan to go back out in it, either. The kids, though, had other ideas - if there was snow on the ground, they were going to play in it! At least they bundled up - though John had to borrow my boots (with thick socks, they almost fit him, which just about kills me) since he left his snow boots at school. Of all the weekends to forget them at school, he picks one of the few we've actually had a snowfall! Determination...

Partly out of necessity (Daddy's still super busy with getting the house together post-move), partly because they just need to do more around the house, the kids are now tasked with doing their own laundry. This is everything soup to nuts, from putting it into the wash all the way through folding and putting it away. Ironing is excluded for now, but may be something to consider for a future date. I honestly expected there to be a lot of whining and complaining about having to do their own laundry; I certainly get enough blow back on almost every other request that I didn't expect this to be any different. Maybe there was a little bit at first, but this past weekend, I had one of those stop-you-in-your-tracks moments as a parent when John asked, "Mom, can I do my laundry today?" And it hit me - one of the millions of reasons your kids need to do chores is because it teaches them that they can do things. It shows them that they are capable, competent people who can...

I almost didn't make it this week; the original plan had a new dinner recipe for the crockpot in the works, but for reasons that I now can't remember less than four days later, it didn't happen, postponed for a few days. Then, to further put my resolution in jeopardy, I came down with a wicked upper respiratory thing on Friday and still felt pretty lousy on Saturday. Between a lack of energy and a noticeable lack of enthusiasm from Justin in me being around food that he might eat, I felt like I might have to take partial credit thanks to the extra recipes already "in the bank" this year. BUT - being me, and being resolutely committed to resolutions, I rallied!! It's evidence, once again, of the power of writing things down. Honestly, would it have mattered if I'd let a week get by without making something new? Maybe not to every single other person on the planet, but it mattered to me: I had set a goal, written it down, and it wasn't like I was runni...