Winter Fun 2011...er...round 2

It snowed. Again. Joy. I am really tired of winter and the pains that seem to trail along in its wake. The bunnies have spent days and nights hunkering down in our house to escape the subzero temps and I can't seem to wipe away the lingering odor of rabbit urine that seems to plague my vacant sun room. Not that it's a huge deal as it's too cold to actually utilize the sun room. No heat in there, you know. So it snowed quite a few days ago and much to the kids' dismay, it was simply too cold to actually go outside and enjoy the snow. Days passed leaving the snow untouched. There were a few random trails of squirrel paw prints where they tried to go for a walk then (according to the trails they left) turned tail and returned back to the safety of the trees. However, we did get to go outside today and enjoy the fluffy white stuff for what I'm hoping to be the last time this winter. Sunny days are in the forecast for us. Of course, we enjoyed the snow in an entirely unexpected way this time around. My sister-in-law told me they made snow ice cream with their last snow and on the words 'ice cream' my interest was obviously peaked and I began to salivate like Pavlov's dog. As I am an ice cream junkie, I had to give this recipe a whirl. I told my mom about it and she reminisced back to when she was a young girl and her mother would make this glorious stuff. At first I couldn't imagine it being good but when I ate the first bite, I ate another. Then I ate a whole bowl. Then I ate two more bowls just for good measure. It tasted just like homemade ice cream and I even made it with soy milk for the kids. It was so delicious that I made it twice. Of course, I also suffered from a major sugar high, but it was totally worth it. I just can't believe that my mother never shared this little recipe with me in all my 32 years. If you've never made it, then next snow...do it. Totally worth it. And best of all, it's free! I put a big clean bowl outside and when it was filled with snow, I mixed 1/2 cup of soy milk, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and 1/4 cup of sugar. You add that to the snow and mix. Add milk and sugar if it needs it to make it sweeter or the right consistency. Equally easy and awesome. I made three flavors. Mmm...Neapolitan.

We went outside today to build more snow men. In my case, I decided to go for a snow hippo. Yup. A hippo. Cool, huh? I went out to feed the bunnies tonight and noticed that it was even cooler looking at night. I hope you all enjoy the warmer weather if you're lucky enough to be getting it this week. Here's hoping this is the last snow creature of the season.