Snow Day and New Cabinets!

Well, after a HUGE ice storm that sent us freezing weather (5 below zero with wind chill out where we live), we finally got a snow storm last night. The ice storm lasted all week last week - it's that big storm that kind of hit all the states east of Texas pretty hard. We have had temperatures for the last five days that have not gone above 20 degrees. It's basically stayed right around 12 or so. Yikes! : ) Anyway, last night it snowed, and it was so beautiful! The ice, I can live without. It's created havoc on the roads around town, and it has delayed the delivery of our new kitchen appliances (more on that later). The kids begged to start school late today (no snow day for homeschooled kids! : )) so that they could go out to play. Here are some pics of them playing in the snow...

'Manda telling me about what their plans are for the snow here...


Working together without fighting for five minutes (this might be a record!)

Somehow Drew got sidetracked, but here are Alyssa and Amanda with the finished product... : )

One pic of each of the three oldest. DJ is a little too young to enjoy the snow right now, I think.

This picture of Drew is him yelling at the girls for throwing a snowball onto the back of his head. You can see the snow covering his ear and back, here. Sigh...

This is Alyssa laughing after being hit in the back with a snowball.

This picture is for Ed - hopefully you can see it, but we have ducks that spend a lot of time in our pond. Further down the post, I have a picture of what our pond looks like this morning, but needless to say, it has been completely frozen for a few days, and the ducks are pretty confused. They tried and tried to land on it this morning, but not only is it frozen, it's also covered with snow. Here is a picture of them flying away from the side of our house. They were kind of running around in the snow near the driveway taking snow baths. Something scared them, and here they are all taking off. They are all wood ducks, by the way. It's a little hard to make out, but once you see them, it really does look beautiful.

Here's another picture of them wandering around near the trampoline. Sorry it's a little fuzzy, but I didn't want to get too close to them, or they would fly off.

Here is our pond. You can see the snow still falling in this picture, too.

And whenever it snows, I have to take pictures of the cardinals. There is something so beautiful about the way they look in the snow. Here are a few...

And, the grand finale. We did not plan on doing this so soon, but some things came up, and we decided to just go ahead: we had our kitchen cabinets painted! The color on them isn't the exact final color; there will be a brown glaze going over the top that will tame down the brightness of the white and blue, but this needs to be on for about a week before the glaze can go on. Phil also decided that we can't have white appliances with white cabinets, and who am I to argue with my husband?!! : ) So, there is a stainless steel oven, microwave, and dishwasher being delivered here next Wed. I will post with more pictures after the appliances and glaze are finished, but here are the preliminary shots. We also painted the walls in the kitchen and breakfast area a light brown color.

Our love to everyone! : )