Wendi {at random}

Pistachio has a boyfriend.
A manly hunky boyfriend.
She calls him Baby.
Meet Baby The Snow Blower.

Baby is parked in our garage, nestled snuggly between the van and the truck. Like a little motorized gas-guzling family. So sweet.

Eaglescout the greatest snow blower driver of them all, is a tad disappointed with me that I didn't take a picture of him as he bid good riddance to our whopping 5 inches of snow this morning. Guess he'll have to live with the memory. Sometimes that happens. So, we thought Snow Storm Albert would drop more than a foot of snow on us, but he swerved a bit east and slammed the coast instead. I count my blessings like a good girl, though. I'll take what we got and be happy about it. But a foot would have been a nice surprise.

Church was canceled this morning. Not just our church but all the area churches. So we all rested and played and cooked and carried on. The kids watched a Home Alone marathon, seeing all four movies today. We, being the sane parents we are, let them watch with nary a thought.


I finally made those buckeyes I spotted on Beneath My Heart. I carefully loaded the peanut butter, powdered sugar, and margarine in Pistachio's stainless steel bowl. Then I prepared to mix it up a bit. But, of course I had to find the directions to figure out how to take the whisk thingie off and put the flat beater thing on. I had three choices - English, French, or Spanish. I chose Latin.


My favorite part was the chocolate dipping station.

Ahhhh.

I jimmyrigged a double boiler - a pot within a pot - and melted me some chocolate chips and some paraffin wax. It took forever for the wax to melt, but the recipe said it was important to add, so I wasn't about to cheat and take it out. I think the buckeyes turned out worth it. Although I'm more a Hokie than a Buckeye, myself.

Then, I had to make snow cream because we had SNOW! Benjy did the honors with Eaglescout monitoring. You have to have clean snow, ya know.

He presented the big purple bowl we use every year and I got to mixing. No Pistachio for this job. I mix this up myself - a can of evaporated milk, a cup of sugar, some vanilla to taste, and a purple bowl full of snow. Lore tells me never to use the first snow. Apparently it brings down all kinds of ick we don't want to ingest. Since this is our second snowfall, I think we're safe. Of course, who knows how legitimate this tale is, but since my dad followed it, I'm not about to jinx myself by eating toxic snow.

And now, for a new picture of Mom and Dad. I believe this was shot at a Virginia Press Association conference in Charlottesville. This was possibly before I was born, so I'm not sure what they're smiling about. Dad was a writer and columnist for The Coalfield Progress at the time. I have a bunch of his columns and I treasure reading them now. And plus also, he called his column At Random. How'd he ever know to steal that from me?????