Snow Day at the Love Shack

So here we are with another weekend snow day!  I have to say I was a bit skeptical about this forecast, as it was "bands of snow here or there" and early on the precipitation wasn't pushing this far west towards us.  But there was a shift sure enough and "I'll believe it when I see it" became "wow, I can really see it!"

We made sure our birds were fed, and there were just so many there on the back deck, including some new arrivals we haven't seen in a while:  we had a thrasher or two, and also a rufous sided towhee (which is just fun to say!).  But the other usual rabble was there too, including numerous bluebirds, cardinals, mockingbirds, chickadees, tufted titmouse, sparrows, mourning doves, finches, downy woodpeckers, hairy downy woodpeckers, our yellow-bellied woodpecker, nuthatches, and those annoying grackles.  I didn't get to see any blue jays today, which I thought was odd - we usually do.  Hopefully they're being well-fed elsewhere.  Anyway, it was quite a bit of activity back there, especially at the table around our "Love Shack" birdhouse!

And we were fairly active too, of course.  To begin with, we had a magnificent skillet breakfast that Mom prepared.  

Afterwards, I was out there making our traditional "bird feeder snowman," or in this case a "snow person."  The snow was not the packing kind at all, so as you would expect, this project took a very long time to complete.  I had a big pile of snow there, and couldn't figure out how to get it any higher when suddenly the though occurred to me that I could take the frozen disc of water inside the bird bath, and use that as a flat surface to put on top of the snow pile, and then add another pile on top of that sheet of ice.  The head just took some time to get into shape because again, it's just not packing snow.  

We'll call this snow person Helga.  She looks like a Helga!

But eventually we got the hat on and eyes and of course the carrot that I just got yesterday at the grocery store.  Unlike last time, the birds flew to it right away to get some of the bird seed the snow person was holding.

Next I was out there with a snow shovel, which is a tool I don't use that often!  But I got the driveway and the sidewalk cleared.  

Maddie was out there doing some taekwondo moves, and posing with her plush friends out there.  Here she is on Riverstone Drive.  We were just ice skating here a week ago!

Georgia's state bird, the Thrasher!

It's pretty cold outside.  The temperature will be below freezing for another day, never going above 32 for I think about sixty hours straight or something like that.  And tomorrow morning it'll feel like negative five degrees with the wind chill, or something like that.  So it was cold and windy out there, so we weren't out there for a terribly long time more.  

We worked on the puzzle some, and then we watched the stage version of "Frozen" that's on television now.  Maddie just saw the high school play, and of course we saw the City Springs Theater version of "Frozen" back in 2024.  This version here was incredible.  There's a costume change that happens - if you know "Frozen," you know the one - and it's so fast it feels like digitally enhanced effects.  But the sets and costumes and talent are amazing on this one.  Now we're all singing "Let it Go" again...

It's cold and windy out there, just the very definition of inhospitable.  We're glad to be indoors.  Time to get some reading in, and then it's time for prayers and a long winter's nap.  No church tomorrow again - second weekend in a row for that.  We're hearing reports of terrible, terrible conditions of roads in Hall County, and the stories from North Carolina on the highway - and a train collision too - all of it sounds terrible.  Glad to be inside tonight.