Wednesday 8 December 2010

WINTER'S ICY GRIP

As the song says: "The weather outside is frightful, and the fire is so delightful. ... Let is snow, let it snow, let it snow!"

Last night Iain and I marched out in freezing temperatures to the Burnbrae for a pint and a meal and then I hiked along to Mairi and John's for an overnight stay so that they could get away early in the morning without the children as it was both uncertain and risky on several counts: would the road be clear? Would the nursery be open?

Our problem with weather is ice. The graders are having trouble clearing the motorways and roads because the snow has now frozen and they are not so effective on ice. Also people may be driving in big 4 x 4s or whatever, but they are just as vulnerable as less robust cars when it comes to driving/slipping on ice.

I spent the day inside the house with the 2 children as the temperature stayed well below freezing all day. Sandy and Lesley came over for coffee. Sandy said the thermomater was showing -15 degrees centrigrade!

Looking out the north window at the winter scene was lovely to look at! But it was another story if you opened the door to the outside air!

Looking out the west window, Lesley shows Ishie the icicles hanging from the eaves of No. 12 CVD. Cars are having to be parked at the bottom of the hill; John walked to work the past 2 days (2 hours across the city to the south side) having left his car along the way! There are many stories of frozen pipes, pallets of frozen vegetables having to be dumped.

So time to put the Thinking Cap on to think of ways to keep Little People busy inside all day. Goodness! What a difference a month can make when a 3 year old is nearly 4 years old. Ishie can spend ages arranging cupcake holders (silicon ... amazingly useful!) by colour and we spin out the time counting and talking about the colours.


Her dexterity is really good now! So these got baked and we ate them when Sandy and Lesley visited.

Alastair would rather play about than bake. However, I managed to keep him busy stacking them in a big pyramid and getting him to fill them with pennies.

He loves playing with bits of wood and stacked this arrangement all by himself the other week when he and Mairi and Ishie paid us a visit.







1 comment:

Vagabonde said...

I have been on another trip so am behind again, plus reading all the blogs and writing a couple of posts, but I read all the posts I missed on your blog. I enjoyed the letter to the bank manager – so witty. I used to have a blue budgie when we lived in San Francisco and taught him a few words – one was “bon appétit” another one was “what’s your name” and it would surprise my guests. I looked at the Christmas pudding recipe and got stumped at the first ingredient – 110 gr shredded suet. I wonder where they would sell that in Georgia – already this year I could not find any mince pie, fresh or frozen and I went in many stores, bakeries, etc. Your snow pictures are so lovely. Here today they said we may get some snow flurries but the weather did not go down past 50 F (10 C) so no snow. I enjoy watching your grandchildren. You are so lucky to be close to them. My eldest grandchild turned 4 on 27 Nov. He is very advanced and can read many words. They tested him and the school will let him enter kindergarten ahead of the others. Keep warm.