Snowflakes falling all around. Seriously: ALL around.

Syracuse, in broad sense, is very good at several things:

1. Having many Wegmans at which to purchase my groceries.
2. Being home to a consistently stellar college basketball team.
3. Finding ways to help us eke out a living year after year.

But what Syracuse is particularly good at is attracting snow. Lots of snow.

This season, for example, as of last night it has snowed 98 inches in Syracuse. For those of you who, like me, struggle to do your 12 times tables much past 12 times 5, that's just over 8 feet. Since we've been here, it's snowed just over two feet, which doesn't even count this morning's ridiculous storm, which had us crawling to church in whiteout conditions. (As a side note: not everyone finds this even remotely dismaying. Our kids, for example. Also, when we arrived at church, our good friend who has a plowing side business was plowing the parking lot. We greeted him, and he said, with a spectacular grin: "It's like it's raining money!")

So yes, it snows here. A lot. We knew this, having lived here before, but as is usually the case, memories dim over time. But, when in Rome, as they say, so yesterday we decided to take the kids snow hiking at Baltimore Woods, a little nature preserve not too far out of town. Everyone enjoyed themselves, especially the kids, but I learned several important lessons:

1. Taking a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old snow "hiking" is a bit of a misnomer, as we mostly crawled along at a snail's pace, stopping frequently to kick and throw snow, pull pine needles off trees, and identify "tracks" that were most likely caused by snow falling from the trees.
2. Taking a snow "stroll" is acceptable only if one is properly outfitted. Jonathan and Clara were properly outfitted; Jeremy and I were not. Jeremy and I had less fun on our stroll than Jonathan and Clara.
3. The truly short among us (Jonathan) have a hard time pushing through snow that comes up to their waists.

These lessons firmly grasped, I am now ready to let this hike dim a bit in my memory before donning my jeans and knit gloves and doing it again in a few weeks. One of these days Jeremy and I are going to accept we live in cold, snowy places. One of these days...

On the road again (again)

So I guess we live in Syracuse again. Two weeks ago, we loaded up everything we owned (again) into our intrepid Golf, and Jeremy left St. Paul for a brisk 1100-mile drive east. The next morning, the kids and I took three (3) flights to get from Minneapolis to Syracuse. Over the eight or so hours of our traveling we went from Minneapolis to Milwaukee to Detroit to Syracuse. That's a lot of hop, skipping, and jumping, if I do say so.



Before I move on, though, I need to pay a little more homage to the Golf, because between Jeremy and that car, miracles happen. I don't know if these pictures do it justice, but in this car are:

• two crib-size mattresses


• one queen size mattress (from Ikea, rolled up as tight as possible, which is not really that tight)


• a dismantled kitchen table and four chairs


• a kids' table and two chairs


• an Ikea armchair


• an ottoman


• a television


• an end table


• two laptop computers


• three desk lamps


• one floor lamp


• all of our clothes, toiletries, and linens


• a large bag of nonperishable food


• an obscene amount of toys and books.

I have no clue how Jeremy got it all into that car, and I watched him do it. If you are not amazed enough, please note that it was less than 10 degrees on the evening of packing. It really was a miserable experience, all said, but we all survived, and now we're resettled. Again. For a little while.

The kids' favorite part about the move was probably the 24 hours of frozen dinners we ate. Delightful! They also seemed pretty keen on sitting on these ridiculous thrones masquerading as car seats whilst watching endless episodes of Barney and Thomas. Ah, to be young...

Once we'd arrived in Syracuse and more or less unpacked everything, we realized that it's not ideal to live in a ground-floor apartment when the neighbors in the 2nd floor apartment--all of which are inexplicably floored with hardwood--have little kids running around all day. So we did what any community-minded people would do: we took our little kids and moved to a 2nd floor apartment. There's nothing like moving just a few days after moving, I've always said, but at least it was a fairly close jaunt. Luckily, our downstairs neighbor is a kind, long-suffering, single young man who works all day until about 6:30. This makes the weekdays just fine, though the kids are understandably tired of having to do their (quite loud) version of "tiptoeing" on the weekends. Apartment living. I am not too keen. Again.

And there you have it. It's good to be back in the 'Cuse, and the kids seem no worse off for being dragged around the country so much this year. Jonathan and Clara are even falling asleep in the same room with absolutely no problem. It's a borderline miracle after our time in St. Paul! Clara is almost always the first to fall asleep. We know Jonathan is not quite ready to rest when this very stealthily appears under his door:

At least they're cute little tootsies!

Mussels have muscles

We subscribe to Sunset magazines so we can know what we're missing by not being, you know, West Coast hipsters and whatnot. Thanks to Sunset, we have been able to keep up with important trends, like fanciful food trucks, gourmet versions of pedestrian foods like ice cream and grilled cheese, and how to live in a sterile home that produces no trash.

But I think the most important piece of advice we've ever gleaned from the magazine appeared in the January 2011 issue, which featured a list of 10 ways to eat healthier. We were particularly struck by the number one tip--and I'd like to reiterate that this was the number one suggestion: Buy mussels.

This has really revolutionized our healthy lifestyle. No longer is our health tied to what we eat; now, for the first time, we can be healthy just by buying something! I am truly inspired. And you can imagine my joy when frozen mussels, precooked in healthful garlic butter, were on sale 3 for the price of 1! at the grocery store today. I bought three packages, and I feel healthier already! Please, join the cause: choose health today, and BUY MORE MUSSELS!

**I would like to point out that they corrected the article on their website to read "Eat mussels." I am gravely disappointed.