The Winter of 2014: We survived...

Barely. Or that's how it felt anyway.  As far as winters go, 2014 was a doozy.  With the "winter storms" arriving menacingly and unabated from December till March these recent months have been a blur of salted steps, shoveled sidewalks, cold cars, drafty windows, extra blankets, and the heaviest socks in the drawer.  There were moments (mostly when the boys had emptied every last toy onto the living room floor while chasing each other in never-ending shrieking circles around the house) where Jen and I would shake our fists at the falling snow and question why, oh why, do we live so far from the equator.  In our weakest moments we may have considered packing it all in and moving somewhere just a bit warmer.  Even now, with April approaching and daffodils and crocuses pushing their way through finally thawed soil, I am not entirely convinced that we've seen our last flurry of the year...

As much as we'll always remember the winter of 2014 for it's snow totals and power outages, I do hope that some things don't get lost in the shuffle.  Blanket forts, block towers, story times, blanket cuddles, family dinners and Frozen soundtrack listening sessions may not make for thrilling blog posts, but those are the activities that carried us through four months of cabin fever, and for that I am grateful. 

 Of course, the best part of any winter is how much it's ending makes us appreciate and anticipate whats to come.  And this year more than any I can remember all of us have gleefully enjoyed the first time running around on open grass, and finally testing out those Christmas-gift bikes on a dry (salt free!) sidewalk.

Let's talk about the garden.

Of the things that I was most excited about when we moved into our new house, the much increased size of of our yard and garden space was high up the list.  Our yard upgrade has already payed serious dividends as the boys spent all of last summer running, swinging, sliding, climbing and exploring their new outside world.  The garden, however, received precious little attention as our focus was on some higher priority areas of the new house.  

This year's garden planning has been in full swing since the deepest parts of winter, and this past weekend marked the start of a new garden year.  I recruited both boys as willing assistants (dig holes in the dirt, and swing sharp tools? yes!) as we put in our first crops of the season: peas and potatoes.  The boys, of course, got good 'n dirty, and had a great time poking holes for peas, trying to catch worms, and learning that seed potatoes grow into MORE potatoes.  Mission accomplished.

Ahem... now where were we?

When you don't update your blog for (over) a year most people rightly assume that you've thrown in the towel.  In this case, however, I'd like to claim extenuating circumstances.  We've been busy!  We bought a house, did lots of work on the house, moved, did more work on the house, got pregnant, did even MORE work on the house, and oh by the way just lived everyday life along the way, which is super exhausting to begin with.

All excuses aside, a recent organizational binge of all our digital photos reminded me of the the value of maintaining this space.  It's nice to document things, and keeping the blog is a good incentive to take good pictures along the way (which we've been terrible at this last year.)  In an effort to get things up-to-date I am posting what pictures we DO have from the last year here.  As you'll see- it's mostly pictures of the house, pictures of Maine and pictures of Christmas, with a small side serving of pictures of Aiden's pre-school graduation.  Like I said, we want to be better about taking pictures going forward (and not just on our phones.)  It's great to document life's big moments, but we also want to remember all the great little moments along the way.

And so, without further ado, lets play catch up: