December 2015 - March 2016

We survived our first family winter in Newfoundland. Real winter weather started in December with the kids getting their first snow day on the 4th. It's sort of unusual, but anything goes here in terms of weather.

Newfoundlanders are obsessed with the weather. It is the first thing one talks about whenever greeted by anyone - even complete strangers. It usually goes something like, "Some weather we're having." "Yes, by'e, some windy" (or snowy, rainy, even sunny on a good day).

Most Newfoundlanders have a positive take on it like a sort of 'could be worse' mentality. It just takes one good weather day and all other weather related miseries seem to be forgotten. Although it does seem that half of the island takes off at some point to Florida.

Michael walking to work...kids were off school due to snow

Most houses do not have garages. They are left to deal with this.

I do love the phrase, 'some weather'. What other option is there? There is always some sort of weather. Most of the time the word some gets used in place of the word very. "Some lucky, some sweet, some shockin'. Language coloquialisms are pretty funny to me here. We had a laugh a while back at the comment made about something that had gone missing "and there it was...gone" Well, if it was gone, it wasn't there. Another similar line is "I found it missing." Michael and I often joke about items of clothing that we are sick of seeing on each other (after a year of travel, some items need to be retired.) Apparently I had a top that Michael got sick of and he said to me, "One day you are going to find that top missing."

Weather and language are all part of getting used to our new digs.

We enjoyed a lovely Christmas with Michael's parents. We had a real tree and a real fire going in the fireplace. The remainder of winter break was uneventful. New Year's Eve, like most years for us was quiet.

January and February can feel like extra long months in winter. The snow came and went several times. I was glad for this because many seasons the snow hangs around all through March and it gets dirty from cars and loses its more magical appearance. The kids only had one other snow day in February. I had the opportunity to chaperone Liam's class field trip to a park where the class went snow shoeing and cross country skiing. The students were hilarious and we all had a great time.

The worst part of winter was when our car crapped out. This was particularly frustrating because we only had it for just over six months. It's in fabulous shape, except for one tiny problem....the turbo was shot. Of course the warranty just ran out, blah, blah, blah. Long story short- we decided to just get a new car.

Someone couldn't navigate through the intersection and ended up on the sidewalk and just left the car there. Just down the street from our place.

Snow plow left a lovely frozen boulder on our driveway. Took us forever to get it out of the way.

Liam and I went sledding on a day off in February.

Liam's class went snow shoeing and cross country skiing.

In other weather related news, (all things come back to weather) we have had some incredibly windy days recently. I mean VERY windy....60-70 mile per hour gusts. I now get the train sound reference people describe when they hear a tornado approaching. It's the kind of wind that shakes your car while you're waiting at a stop light (which are incidentally blown from vertical to horizontal if they are the hanging lights). It's he kind of wind that if you're walking into it, you feel like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz in that scene where he leans forward (similar to Michael Jackson's anti-gravity lean in the Smooth Criminal video....if you don't get those references, then you're too young). It's the kind of wind if you're walking with it, the wind pushes you forward like a friend who is trying to get you to reluctantly introduce yourself to someone cute. Push, step, step, step. 'Come on! Go ahead. Just say hi,' Push, step, step, step. That never ends well. Suffice it to say, it was windy.

We also celebrated Maeve's birthday in winter. She requested a Kit Kat cake.

So now it is the beginning of Spring. We've already had one day of significant snowfall and the kids were hoping for a snow day in April. Welcome to Newfoundland.