Hoofprints: S-s-s-so C-c-c-cold......

It's cold here. Not just a little cold. Rather, it's the kind of cold that when you slip your gloves off for five seconds to get a better grip on something, you can feel the bitter bite of the air slicing into your vulnerable flesh. Along with a good part of the country, we were in blizzard conditions today. Not cool. So how do we spend our days sheltering ourselves from the massive blizzard happening outside? Let's just say it was a long day. It all started out this morning when Josh left for class. Yes. It's true. Every school in the state was closed but my husband's pile of dung union decided that they should all risk their lives to go to class. So at 5:00 a.m. I woke up with him to help get his lunch ready to make his morning just a tad easier. He shivered out the door at 5:45 and I jumped back in bed to get all toasty warm again. I said a prayer for Josh and then zonked back out. At 8:15 (kiddos slept in today) I hear the phone ring. It was the kind of moment where you think you are dreaming and then realize in a sudden wave of panic that the sound you are hearing is in fact quite real. My eyes burst open and I blindly (I have horrible vision w/o glasses) jumped out of bed only to find that my leg had somehow decided to stop working. As my foot fell on the ground I heard and felt a loud cracking sound. I believe that at this point I actually said outloud, "That's not good," as I collapsed to the floor. Thinking that this stumble was some freakish fluke and that Josh was on the phone in some horrendous car wreck, I attempted to get back up only to find that once again, my leg was not working. I couldn't feel my leg or foot in the slightest bit. In my state of confusion and still not dealing with a fully functioning brain, I couldn't understand why my blasted leg wouldn't move. The phone stopped ringing and I realized that my head had started to hurt because in my most graceful stumble, I had whacked it on the metal bed frame. I took a moment to gather my thoughts and came to understand that my leg had somehow fallen asleep when I was zonked out. Could someone explain how that happens because it makes no sense to me? Anyhow, I dragged my injured body to the phone and discovered that it was my mother-in-law on the message calling to tell me that they were getting bombarded with snow. It wasn't Josh, meaning that he was safe and sound, and so I climbed back into bed to tend my leg. As the feeling came back I realized that the cracking sound was probably just my old joints arguing with the sudden leap of confusion and the worst I suffered was a yucky sprain and a couple of bumps. The kids got up and burst into the bedroom, bringing their appetites with them so I limped off into the kitchen to whip up their first breakfast. I have hobbits, remember? I spent the day pulling the kids off of each other from the numerous, what I like to call "boredom fights". We watched a lot of movies and in between the hours I went out to shovel the two-foot high snow drifts out of our garage-like structure only to resprain my ankle again after a poorly judged jump into a snow drift. I also attempted to keep the bunnies from freezing to death. Turns out that it's just too dang cold to do much of anything. It's so cold that I broke down and brought the bunnies inside. Pickles and Nacho are now hunkering down in the sunroom.

It's still pretty cold in there, but easily 20 degrees warmer than outside and 30-40 degrees warmer than that nasty wind chill. They say that rabbits can't handle dramatic temperature shifts so I decided to not bring them into the heated part of the house. Oh, those darn bunnies have a cozy little hay filled box to climb into, but when I limped outside to go give them round two of the fresh unfrozen water, I found them stupidly sitting in the six inch open gap each with at least one inch of snow covering them. I slapped myself on the forehead and wondered what was going through their mind. As the wind chill is to dip to a dangerous level tonight, I gathered them up and fixed up a place in the sunroom. Crazy rabbits. The kids couldn't have been more excited to have them in the house. Here are my crazy kids with their favorite toys in the warmth of the house. Stay warm everyone!