Joy and Fun in the Heart of Winter

 Above, shining weirdly in the eerie green light, is the only snow I've seen in Blacksburg this winter. I am coping with this about as might be expected.

We're trying to keep our spirits up as best we can in the SW Virginia version of the polar vortex.

Improvised boats and rides therein, for example. 

We enjoyed a visit with our friends in the country (25 minutes away but still!):

And we are so glad to be back in church. We just love being there; it is really a second home.

Toddler mates.

Thanks for my new dress, Grandma!

Amos, another nursery star. 

There isn't always room for Mr. Cool in the baby room. 

Miles & Baden can conquer the world! Or at least Children's Chapel.

Back home, where the Wild Things are.  

I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say I just got a letter that was VERY MUCH to my taste:

 It contains an invitation to something which will happen this summer and which has given me an inestimable amount of joy to anticipate. Come on, summer!

Alas, January remains, bleak, cold, and still, snowless. Ouch.

Preschool was cancelled simply due to cold yesterday. Today, there was a delayed opening, so Jon and Miles killed time with a walk at the duck pond.

 This is about as much ice as I can remember seeing on the Duck Pond.

Winter wisdom: keep swimming, keep breathing, keep moving so you don't freeze in place.

Once the Fahrenheit rises into the 20s, I can start to love winter again, and can appreciate its wisdom. All things must rest, sleep, even die, but that does not mean they should be considered as lost.

Besides, we know birdsong by its absence, sunshine by darkness, and the value of the blood in our limbs by the freezing quality in the air in winter.

Marilynne Robinson agrees with me:

"To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole."

-From Housekeeping