The Ice Ball

We were meant to have a lot of snow.   Possibly eight inches of snow.   But it didn’t happen.   We got maybe an inch-and-a-half of snow, but underneath that was an inch or more of sleet/freezing rain/ice junk that crunched under foot until it partially melted and then froze back as a block of ice.   It was treacherous for a while until it started melting.

The melting has taken a lot more time than I expected though.   We’ve been well above freezing for two days now and the amount of frozen stuff coverage is still significant.   I suppose if it were eight inches of snow I wouldn’t be surprised to see a decent bit still here.   It’s just the compactness of the frozen material that’s throwing me off.

This afternoon I was heading out in the car when I saw three children with a big red bucket on the front walkway.   They dumped it out and a huge block of ice came tumbling down.    I rolled down the window and asked what they had there.

They told me they had wanted to make a snow ball two days before but they couldn’t get one made with what was on the ground.   So they filled up a bucket with water and made a large ice ball instead.   It’s still well above freezing, but I think that ice ball is going to be on my driveway for another few days.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is hearing catch phrases and sprinkling them into his general conversation of late.   Just the other day I heard him yell out, “awesome saucesome!’   And then later, “oh yeah, complete success.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  One of my lifelong friends read here how my daughter wanted a “Mermaid Set”.   She messaged me asking for more details as she hadn’t gotten my daughter a Christmas present.    I consulted with my daughter to find out the mermaid had red hair and a green tail.    I further learned she was from “that movie I can see on the iPad”—which I figured out was The Little Mermaid.  Now it all made sense.    Today, thanks to a very kind gift from JoAnn, Ariel arrived.   There was a lot of dancing and jumping up and down, after which my daughter requested, “mom, can you take ‘mermaid set’ off my Christmas list now?”