A few weather stats for the Grand Rapids area (keeping in mind that our particular location  generally has more extreme weather than the area average) :

Percentage of possible sunshine during the months of November 2008 thru January 2009:

Twenty-six.

Number of years in which the temperature has not hit 50 degrees on Groundhog Day:

One.  2009.  That one was a surprise to me.  We don't often hit 50 degrees in February, or so I thought.

Number of hours above freezing during the month of January, 2009:

Seven.

Yes, seven.

Hours.  Above freezing.

It's been a long winter already, and we still have a bout two-and-a-half months to go.

*Sigh*

I know I need to post some Christmas pics.  Instead I am posting more weather pics.  Don't ask me why because I really don't know.

I have an uncle who spent his first 30 years living in the northeast and midwest and has spent the last 35 living happily in the Pacific Northwest.  His philosophy about the weather out there is, "At least you don't have to shovel rain."

So what does he know?
 

Lovely, isn't it?

Back to the outside.  Our driveway, fortunately, is paved, but the neighbors' is not.  They were out of town for the weekend, so Hubz put in some warning stakes to keep them from driving into these deep potholes when they returned.  I'm glad he was a good neighbor.  So were they.

The overflow from this driveway ran down into our pond...
 
   

...which in turn overflowed and ran back onto the same neighbor's property.

...but electricity, heat, and water are so delightful!  Glad we still have them.  Last year's Sunday-before-Christmas storm knocked out our power for 33 hours.

My Fuzzy little sheep is supposed to be onstage right now with her Sunday School classmates performing "The Friendly Beasts".  I knew when the phone rang at 7 am that church was going to be cancelled.  The kids will do the show next week instead.

And since we've no place to go, I really ought to get busy working on my MIL's Christmas gift.  But first, a few pics...

Autumn decorations by Mom & Fuzz.
Yes, this post contains PICTURES!  Don't pass out or anything.

It was a record-breaking week.  Never before has our area seen four consecutive 70+ degree days in November.  October, yes.  But a November day that comes even close to 70 degrees is rare indeed, let alone four that surpass it.  We'd already had some typically cold October weather in the high 40's, so this warm spell was as surprising as it was welcome.  All in all,  we had over a week of unseasonably warm and sunny weather.

So of course, we took advantage of it and spent a lot of time outside.

We worked in the yard-- Hubz mowed and trimmed; I cut down plants and, with help from Spaz, extended our garden retaining walls. 

(Here's the upper wall before I extended it.)

(And here it is a couple hours later.)

We also enjoyed some old-fashioned outdoor play during a back-to-the-1800's field trip.  When I organized this field trip back in September, I had been so disappointed to find that our group could not get in to this place until November, because of course in November it would be oh-so-cold.

Or not.

 
During "recess" outside the one-room schoolhouse, the boys played hoops while the girls took to the swings.

And back at home, we blew off some schoolwork in favor of Physical Education.  Some of the schoolwork that wasn't cancelled was postponed til evening in order to make more time to play outside in the afternoon.

 
I was really proud of Fuzz for venturing out on the rollerblades.  Her last attempt, well over a year ago, had not been successful, but she decided to give it another go

That's a football Spaz is about to kick into the soccer net.  You can see it a little better in the picture below.

Mr. T watches over all the front-yard goings-on.

 We have all winter to sit inside and do schoolwork.  For now, we have to do what we can do when we can do it, right?  When God hands us some unexpected lovely days, He doesn't intend for us to sit at the table doing inventor reports.  (That's got to be in the Bible somewhere.)

 
Fuzz had lots of fun taking pics like this one.

Although Thursday was our fourth and final 70-degree day, the predicted return to the mid-50's held off for one more day.  Friday was still nice enough to don a jacket and work & play outside.  It was our ninth straight day of warm weather.

But all good things must come to an end.  Especially when one is talking about weather in Michigan.  Saturday, as predicted, was rainy and cold.  And today...

...well, here's the view from our deck this afternoon. 

(You'd think that with all the yard clean-up going on, we'd have remembered to put away the hammock & deck chairs for the winter.  You'd think.)

There's a reason this state's unofficial motto is, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

But it sure was nice while it lasted.

We have had our Wednesday night church services cancelled due to blizzard conditions not once, not twice, but three weeks in a row!  It seems that all our vicious weather wants to come on Wednesdays.  Perhaps we should consider just calling off mid-week meetings until May.  (I would have said April, but you may recall my mentioning that we cancelled services last year for a mid-April bizzard.)  It would save a lot of thinking and effort.

We've also cancelled afternoon piano lessons two straight weeks, so our Wednesdays have been remarkably less busy than usual.  I can't complain about having the unexpected time at home.  When it's cold and blustery, it's nice to just cozy up and not go anywhere.  Besides, I help teach our Wed night Kids' Club, so having a night off --or three-- is a nice break.

Two weeks ago, Cheez' "snow day" off school was actually on Tuesday.  Most schools, including hers, were back in session Wednesday, but by the time we returned from piano lessons & errands around 4:00, the weather had turned bad again.  I had just put the finishing touches on my Kids' Club "10 Commandments" project when I got the call that church was cancelled.  (We just moved that topic back a week... and then another week... and now another.  My project is STILL waiting to be used.  It's been nice not having to come up with new things!)

That weekend was bitter cold, with single-digit temps in the evenings.  It was not fun to be out and about.  But Monday- that would be LAST week Monday- they soared up above freezing, and Tuesday temps were in the high 40's with RAIN.  It was a pretty drastic change in temps, but not nearly as drastic as what came that night.  In a mere nine hours, the temp dropped 40 degrees, from 47 to 7. 

Now generally speaking, I'd far rather have snow than rain in the winter.  Winter rain makes the world ugly and slushy, whereas snow makes everything pretty.  But snow is nice in somewhat small increments, without swirling winds.  You know, big fluffy flakes falling in a vertical direction.  That's not what we got last week.  Wednesday morning we awoke to find snow plastered pretty much everywhere except the ground, so fierce had been the winds.  Big tufts of snow covered our glass doors -even the ones "sheltered" by a 6-foot deep porch- and the insides of our porch columns.  Opening the garage door even for a minute meant everything in the entire garage was instantly covered with a thin layer of snow.  The roads were covered with black ice and visibility was practically zero.

Of course, every district around cancelled school again... except the "homeschool districts", of course.  Yes, for the second straight week, Fuzz & Spaz had to do "school as usual" (except for piano lessons) despite Cheez' day off.   They get long play-in-the-snow breaks when it's nice snowy weather.  When it's nasty out, they may as well be sitting inside doing schoolwork, right?

They know they get many more days off than Cheez does anyway, and they didn't complain TOO much.  Nor did they take Huz' employee's suggestion that they "find out where the superintendent lives and egg her house".  Probably because they knew they'd have to clean it up.  (Besides, Fuzz would consider that a waste of perfectly good food.)  And maybe because I generously let them have indoor "action breaks" & play breaks instead of forcing them outside in the blizzard.

That was last week.  This week was much the same-- rain on Tuesday followed by plummeting temps and blowing, driving snow on Wednesday.  Today's blizzard, though probably worse than last Wednesday's, didn't come early enough for schools to be cancelled, but it was horrid enough by noon that many things were closing.  Huz asked us to cancel piano lessons for yet another week.  (Fortunately, our teacher is flexible & understanding.)  It's a 25-mile round trip for us, and in that sort of weather I didn't even dare drive down the street to the library to pick up my holds!  I had to bundle up in boots and heavy coat just to run the 30 feet to Huz's shop.  Fuzz actually did attempt to go outside and play, but was back inside within a couple minutes.

I have to admit to being secretly glad that church would undoubtedly be canceled again.  Apparently, I'm getting a little spoiled. 

It remains to be seen whether Cheez will have to go to school tomorrow.  If not, she'll end up with a 4-day weekend, since Friday is a scheduled day off for conferences.  But the younger two won't.  They already had this past Monday off to recover from their weekend up north, and we had a light day Tues because, well, it was just "one of those days".  So we'll be trying to get in at least some semblance of a schoolday the next couple mornings before we run off to soccer (if it's not cancelled) and rescheduled piano lessons.  It does make it harder to have a 'normal" day when Cheez is off school, but she is usually happy to sleep til noon so as to not disrupt our flow.  Isn't she a sweetheart? :-)

So no "snow days" for WACKOS this week, either.  We'll save those for more pleasant weather.  

***

Speaking of days off...  There was a story in last night's news about some major vandalism that had occured at my neice's high school, resulting in school being closed for the day.  Tonight, they followed up with the news that the vandals -all students at the school- had confessed.  And their motive?

They wanted "a day off school."

Well, they got one.  And much more.  It is hard to fathom that sort of thinking.  Or lack of thinking, or whatever.

Just in case Fuzz & Spaz had any ideas, we told them that they had better not try that at home.

Recently, my blogger friend SoCalVal smugly posted some pictures of her house in various seasons of the year.  So I thought I would do EXACTLY the same thing, only Michigan style.

Here is my house in the winter...

...and in the spring... 

 ...and in the summer...

Ha, ha!  Not really... quite...

Oh yes, like much of the country, we did have some nice weather a couple weeks ago, in the mid-50s.  (Not that I was here to enjoy it, but I was enjoying the same temps in PA.)  But winter quickly returned with a vengeance.  Those pics were taken today.  It was fairly sunny this afternoon and some of the snow melted, so you would've seen more if I'd taken the picture yesterday or the day before.  Windchill has been below zero the last few mornings and up to only 4 or 5 above in the afternoons.  That's how it's been for about the last week.  Next Monday it is supposed to get up to 40, but I'm sure that won't last long.

Cheez had a snow day Tuesday, but was all to happy to (a) sleep away most of her morning and (b) run errands, so that her presence would not "interfere" with our homeschooling.  Wasn't that kind of her?  Then Wednesday night, church was cancelled due to the weather.  The last time that happened was during a big blizzard 9-1/2 months ago.  Yes, 9-1/2 months ago.  If you do the math, you'll find that was in... April.

Yup.  My house really DOES look like that in the spring sometimes.  I'm sure you don't remember this post, so here's a repeat of a pic I took last April 11:

But just for good measure, I'll throw in another couple pics, taken two weeks EARLIER on March 26...

Yeah, that was definitely a fluke, but the weather can be wierd like that here.  That's why we have a saying in Michigan: "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

I'm waiting.  And it's still COLD.

It almost makes me long for THIS:

But not quite.

I hesitate to make another post so soon, since I have had only two comments on my last one.  Apparently fewer people find humor in thigh woes than I had anticipated.  Either that or my readership is way down from my earlier estimated high of two or three.  I need to market myself a little better, I suppose.  I wonder what it would cost to take out an ad during late-night M*A*S*H reruns?...

Well, this post won't help any, because it is, quite frankly, rather boring.  I'm posting it anyway.

It is really, really, really, really HOT these days.  Daily temps have been in the 90s all weeks, some days as high as 98, and there's not much relief in sight.  It is too hot to do ANYTHING.

And dry.  We have been rain-deficient literally for MONTHS.  This is true of West Michigan in general, and of my locale in particular.  Since mid-May, we have averaged less than an inch of rain per month.  LESS THAN AN INCH, people.

And of course, when you have 2-1/2 acres of lawn, you don't water.  (Well, unless you're our next-door neighbors with the underground sprinkling, that is.  But nobody else around here waters the lawn.)

Remember all those blizzard pics I posted back in April?  (If not, you can see a few of them on my bottom slide show in the sidebar.)  Well, here's what my lovely yard looks like these days:

Front Yard-- you can see the green grass around the area where the sprinkler is watering the flowers, but that's about it.

Back Yard.  Yes, I know the pond is scummy.  REALLY scummy.  Algae grows better than grass, OK?

Actually, both yards look better than they did a few weeks ago when we had 14-inch tall brown weeds dotting the landscape.  Of course the weeds grow even though the grass doesn't.  After we finally had some substantial rain three weeks ago, Biz got on the lawnmower and mowed them all down.

(Considering that, besides helping with dishes, mowing the lawn is the only regular task we have given to Biz this summer, I'd say he has gotten off really easy this year.  Well, I have tried to make up for it a little by asking him to cut down the "giant pricklies" that plague our lawn & gardens as well and can grow several feet tall.  However, every time I hint that I might ask him to do yet something else around here, he brings up that pesky car incident...)

As unbearably hot as the days have been, nights are still surprisingly cool.  By about 8:30 pm, it is usually cool enough that we can enjoy a game of frisbee golf or ladderball in the front yard in the hour or so before the sun sets.  I've even been known to throw on a light jacket on such occasions.  But daytime?  I get a headache from the sun & heat just being out for a few minutes to water veggies or hang out laundry.

Well, I'm sure my blogger friends from points far south are tired of listening to me whine, so I'll stop now and mention that I am ever-so-grateful for central air conditioning!  When we were house-hunting two years ago, "central air" was not at the top of my list of desired features, falling for example somewhere below "fireplace" and "deck".  When we bought this house, I considered the air merely a bonus.  Boy, am I glad we have it!  Life these days would be so much more miserable without.

And that's the weather report for now.  Stay tuned for snow pics coming as early as October.

Greetings from the frigid north!

My friend TC once made a comment on one of my weather posts that "kids in Michigan must wear snowsuits during Easter egg hunts."  I chuckled at her exaggeration.  Except that... it wasn't.  Our local newspaper on Saturday featured a front-page photo of a little girl hunting Easter eggs and wearing... yup.

We did indeed have a white Easter to go along with our green Christmas.  But the snow was almost all melted by Tuesday (yesterday).  It was sunny and 42, and the kids & I got some work done outside.  (They scooped poop and I swept the garage.)

Then today, winter returned again in her full wrath.  Of course.

I know everybody (well, almost) has been having abnormal weather.  20's & 30's in Florida & Georgia, 40's in areas of the SW.  And up north of us in the UP, they've had far more snow (& colder temps) than we have.  Still...

It really seems bizarre to me to have Wednesday evening church cancelled due to a snowstorm --in APRIL.  February was one thing.  Not that I'm complaining.  Since I work in our Kids' Club, I am there every Wed eve without fail, even on my anniversary and Valentine's Day, except for the week all my kids were sick.  So I don't mind a night off.

I already pushed back the start of the homeschool Outdoor Game Time we host in our front yard.  Since "snowball fights" is not on our list of games to play, we'll be starting NEXT Thurs instead of tomorrow.  And I'm really hoping Spaz' Thurs eve soccer practice gets cancelled!  I'm not looking forward to Saturday's season opener.  (Did somebody say "spring" season?)

The other really bizarre thing is that, with all the potential blogs floating around in my head every single day, few of which will actually ever materialize on the keyboard, I even choose to post about the weather at all!  Surely my life must be more interesting than that.  It is (tho' some days not by much), which is probably why I'm too tired by the time I get here to write about anything besides the weather.

OK, time for a little refresher.  Go reread this post, taking special note of the pics of my kids in the sprinkler a mere 10 days ago.

And then check out these photos from yesterday...

...and today.

Told ya.

We're on "spring break" this week (although we are trying to finish up our history notebooks).  Coulda fooled me-- I thought it was winter break all over again.  Fortunately Monday & Tuesday were nice, and the kids spent much of Tuesday afternoon outside.

And those swimsuits got some use again anyway.  Last night I took the kids and a friend out to the Aquatic Center in a neighboring city.  Can you believe all this --and more-- for only $11/family?  (And that's for NON-residents!)

The place was packed to the gills, as I should have expected.  When we went during Christmas break, it wasn't the least bit crowded.  But of course, the weather was much nicer & much warmer during Christmas break!  We had the April weather then and are getting the January weather now.

On our way home, we battled blowing snow and very poor visibility-- in short, a minor blizzard.  The closer we got to home, the worse it was.  And it continued throughout the night and all this morning.  By early afternoon, there was about 4" of snow on my deck.

April snow is not highly unusual.  (There have even been a few years when we've had flurries in May.)  It's just that this is the first time I've been able to blog about it.

So after all this years, I've finally figured it out.  What "spring break" really means is... a break from spring.  There's a reason I don't put winter clothes away until May.

Edited to add:  On a rather pathetic note-- I have just added a new category for all my posts about *yawn* the weather.  I think that officially, any blog with a category for weather must undoubtedly have reached a new apex of utter boringness.

I am wearing a T-shirt and capris today!

Some of you (who live in locales where you do not get to experience the joy of changing seasons, or where spring arrives in February) have no idea why that is even worth mentioning.

Remember these kinds of pics from a couple weeks ago?

MARCH 5                                 MARCH 13

Well, I have a couple more to add to the Gallery of March Weather Pics:

MARCH 26

That definitely does NOT mean summer has arrived, and may not even mean that spring is here to stay.  The weatherman says we have an 80 percent chance of getting measurable snow in April.  And I don't think anyone is really very surprised by that.  We often get three seasons in one month in the spring & fall.  You learn not to pack up seasonable clothing too quickly.  My mudroom at the moment sports boots and flipflops, winter coats and beach towels.  We'll see what comes up over the next couple weeks.

In the meantime, it's awfully hard to "do school".  We did math out on the deck yesterday and took some extra long play breaks again.

My hubby just came in and says it is 44 degrees out.  It is supposed to be mixed sun & rain in the upper-40s today, with a possible high of 50.  Guess I'd better change back into long sleeves.  At least I won't have to put on a winter coat... today.  As for next week, that remains to be seen.

Beware the Ides of March!

and

Happy Birthday James Madison (256) and Andrew Jackson (240)!

There, got that out of my system.  Now for the post…

We have a saying in Michigan:  “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”

March 3                                                    March 13

See what I mean?

Here’s a 1-question quiz:

It is the first beautiful spring-like day this year.  The air is warm, the snow is melting, the creek (which only runs in the spring anyway) is overflowing.  You remember how much the kids loved the creek last spring.  Your approach to the day is…

(a)  “Well, beautiful day or not, school is in session until 4 pm, with your customary two 15-minute recesses…”

(b)  “You can go outside when your work is all finished.  Come on, let’s try to get it done a little earlier!”

(c)  “We have to get our whole list done, but I guess we can do our reading outside and trade indoor chores for outdoor ones.”

(d)  “OK, let’s blow cross off this, this, and this for today so that you can have some extra-long outdoor play breaks!”

(e)  “Let’s see what we can get done in the morning and not worry about the rest; then you can play outside all afternoon.”

(f)  “Schoolwork?  On a gorgeous day like this??!”

I tend to be a d kind of homeschool mom.  I can at times be more of an e, and feel like I really should be more of a b or a c, so I guess d is a good compromise.  (I would have implemented the second part of c as well, but it was really far too sloppy for reading outside.)  The problem with e is that we are not very disciplined around here, so “Let’s see what we can get done” usually translates to “very little”;  d keeps the kids (and me!!) a little more accountable.  I am often tempted (aren’t we all?) to be an f, but I can honestly declare that I have no desire whatsoever to be an a!  (Did you follow all that?)

This was Tuesday, March 13.  I forgot to add that exactly 7 days prior, I was in the same situation--  blowing off some schoolwork so that the kids could have extra-long outdoor playbreaks-- with one important difference:  One week earlier, the long playbreak was because, with at least 6" of snow on the ground, it was perfect SLEDDING and SNOW FORT weather!

Oh, and I so LOVE having this kind of setting in my back yard!  (Truth be told, most of the creek & woods are actually on the neighbor’s property, but we won’t worry too much about that minor technicality. :-)   Two years ago, when we still lived on a 50x100 city lot and were house-hunting, I never would have imagined I would be able to send my kids out for play break in such a setting.  God blessed us exceedingly abundantly beyond what we could have thought or imagined.  I try to remember every day not to take it for granted!