The snowfall has been absolutely back-breaking this year.   Wave after wave of 5 to 6 inches at a time and up to 8 and 12 on a few occasions have really started to become oppressive.  So you can imagine that I was pretty dimayed when I woke up this morning to find yet another huge driveway full of snow.  So I bundled up and trudged outside preparing to throw my back out once again. 

Surprisingly, it got better from there.  The air temp was fairly warm, maybe 35 to 38 and the bright sunshine actually had me breaking a light sweat under my hood.  That in itself was a pretty nice improvement from shoveling in the bone chilling cold.  So I called Melody to come out and play since it was such a nice day. 

Matthew is just getting over a cold so no-go for him, and good luck getting Pinki to help me shovel…

With the warm temperatures I expected the snow to be wet and heavy.  Again a positive, it was very light powdery snow.  Pretty nice!  It ended up being a really fun time playing with my daughter and hacking through an easy shoveling job.  After about an hour it looked like this:

 Not too shabby!   As I was clearing in front of the mailbox I noticed the plow had knocked it sideways pretty good.  It’s probably broken, I bet the snow is all that is holding it up.  Should last a while though, only the very top of the post and the mailbox itself are showing.

 This definitely won’t be the last shoveling job, of that I’m sure.  But if there are more like this one, I won’t feel so bad about not being able to afford a snow blower yet.

Another fuzzy phone cam video I took while on the roof clearing leaves out of the gutter.  Had a pretty good bird’s eye view of the kids playing…

Melody’s 1st Day of School

Originally uploaded by Jason & Sally Phelps

I uploaded some pictures from Melody’s first few days of Pre-K. Click the picture to see them!

The Band + A Few Friends

I got a pretty swell birthday present last night, a spot in a well established band in the Madison area. 

The picture was taken right after the first show I played.
Front Row Left to Right: Me, Lead Singer Bobby, Guest Singer Sharon, Light & Sound-Tech-Guy Dana, Guitarist & Keyboard Player Tim.
Back Row Left to Right: Bar Owner “Boo”, Drummer “Bones”

Very busy band.  I’ll get paid fairly well though, which is probably how I convinced Sally to let me do this, haha.

Edit: Fixed the picture and added who’s-who.

04

Originally uploaded by Jason & Sally Phelps

I uploaded some birthday pictures to Flickr. Click the photo to be taken to my photos there. It seems I have only limited options for organizing the pictures in a ‘free’ account, and I certainly ain’t gonna pay for no stinkin’ photo service so… hopefully it’s easy enough to shuffle though the pictures and find the ones you want. Good luck.

Matthew turned 1 on the August 1st, which means it was his golden birthday. Happy birthday, son!

Pic 01

Originally uploaded by Jason & Sally Phelps

Playing a little catchup here, these are the pictures I promised from the evening at the duck pond. Click the picture to go see the rest of the photos on Flickr.

Matthew got to watch Melody feed the ducks at Lakeview Park in Middleton this evening. I would have taken him out and let him try, but I was afraid the swarming bugs were going to carry him off. Pinky was at Dawn & Jamie’s house and Mom was at work. We didn’t stay much longer than this video, after which we just walked a few laps around the pond.

Oh and I also upheld this annoying tradition that I’ve been following where every year I “rescue” a fish from my first fishing trip of the year and flop him into an unused aquarium. This year it was a lucky crappie. I’ll feed it minnows for most of the summer and then let it go. Today was Mr. Crappie’s lucky day as he’s now happily swimming in Lakeview Pond, along with the crawdad that hid in the tank until he was too big for the fish to eat.

Enjoy the shaky video, I was swatting horseflies with my other hand, and I’ll post pictures soon.

I made a Flickr set of our pictures from the Dane County Fair. Just click the picture and it will take you there.

We went on a Friday night which turned out to be a little slow, not a lot of things had been set up yet. The kids had fun, but I forgot to eat my yearly cream puff. I love carnival cream puffs. Instead I got some soggy “bloomin’ onion” type thing that looked great in the picture but didn’t have any of the crunch I was hopin’ for.

Here’s a video recorded, uploaded, and blogged all from my phone so let’s see how it works…

This is Matthew last Sunday at the Bethany Church nursery, just a few days shy of his first birthday. As you can see, he’s got a pretty good grasp of the whole walking thing. He can kind of run, but he usually falls on his face. Pretty speedy for such a little guy though.