Deep Winter

We have had an unprecedented amount of snow up here in the last couple of weeks. It has been great for sledding and playing outside in monstrous piles of snow- and even though the shoveling has been a little crazy, it is actually nice to get out and commiserate with the neighbors. I have been trying to take cues from my neighbor about when to shovel (NOT before the ice storm, but after) when to raise the wipers on the cars so they don't freeze to the windshield, the best kind of gear etc. It has gotten so high next to our houses that we have had to make a little tunnel so the dryer vent can come out from the basement. Its been drastically better than last year for getting the boys into doing stuff outside - James will even stay out and play by himself for a while when everyone else has had it.
We went with a group of friends to an AMC cabin up in the Berkshires this weekend and it was a blast. There was a monstrous wood stove in the newly renovated main house  and a great industrial kitchen to cook in. We mainly refereed kids activities and went sledding- right outside the back door. Keska was able to follow some of the group cross country skiing and she had the best time. Our friend Jeff took some great video of the kids sledding:


And Katharine went sledding for the first time ever! She was pretty into it. We also created a new group of domino players which we are hoping will become a Sunday afternoon regular thing to replace our Saints/NFL neighborhood weekends.

Here is James and BFF Sadie on the back porch-

 This is in our backyard after storm #1:

 Storm #2 buried the basement hatch completely-

 This is from the cottage at Noble view-

 Daniel got up early and was inundated with eager acolytes for his solitaire seminars:

 Sadie and Willy posing-

From the back @Noble view-