A "real" sled......

My wonderful husband went to the Ace Hardware on the way home yesterday and purchased a "real" sled for the girls. The snow and ice are starting to melt this morning but the girls got in a few really exciting rides before it disappears. This is their first true sled rides. Yesterday, after Michelle posted the photos of them sledding on their stomachs on a piece of cardboard, their northern friends laughed at them because they said it is not enough snow to sled in. Michelle said "For a southerner - if you get up from the slope and your front is not covered in mud, then there is enough snow!"

Another Snow Day!

Our van in the snow - Dec 16, 2008

The girls had a great time today watching and playing in the snow. We had about one inch today and might have a little more tonight.

The girls didn't have a real sled so Becca made one with a piece of cardboard and a Kohl's bag!

Wheeeeeeeeee!

Taking a spill off the "sled"

Michelle's turn!

Becca's whole reason for wanting to move here...snow!

Skyline Chili, Bengals, and Cold…

This move is all about the adventure I guess. It certainly hasn’t been easy. We had to move at the worst possible time to sell a house. That means we are “livin’ on the edge” by hoping we can keep our house rented until it sells - an adventure. Riding a roller coaster on the emotions on that one! Luckily, the two children we brought with us to Cincy view every day here as an adventure. Each morning the girls awaken to snow on the ground, and there has been 5 days since we moved here, there is excitement in the air! A lifetime Southerner moving north right as the winter starts is definitely just begging for adventure.

In our desperate search to find a house here, we have driven our car over all of Northern Kentucky. We’ve turned down many a wrong street or just turned down a street to see where it would lead. With the help of our trusty “Cincinnati Area Mapbook” we’ve just seen each turn as an adventure. Getting lost is a good way to learn about an unfamiliar area! We also are trying to adapt to different ways of saying words (It’s Bengals with a “short” e, not Beeengals with a “long” e!), different news reporters (Where’s Monica Kaufman!), and different names of roads and cities being talked about on the car radio (That’s surprisingly jarring).

We purposely wasted our money on an adventure the other day….we went to a Cincinnati icon – Skyline Chili. One of these little chili dives are around every corner, the way Starbucks is in DC. The locals are sitting in the little booths munching on oyster crackers, waiting on their “three-way” or “four-way” chili in a bowl, over spaghetti noodles, or over a cheap hot dog. While my husband was reluctantly placing our order, I read the history of Skyline off the menu. Apparently Nicholas Lambrinides immigrated from Greece with this family recipe and opened his first restaurant overlooking the skyline of Cincinnati, OH. The chili is so different…a very thin soup-like chili with a strong flavor of cloves and nutmeg added to the “normal” chili seasonings. Accchhhh. I congratulated my husband and girls on being brave enough to try something very new and different, told them that my curiosity was satisfied, and we won’t ever have to go to Skyline Chili again. Another adventure….this one a once in a lifetime.

Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore....

This is the fifth snow since we have arrived in the Cincinnati area. This one the deepest…though only about one or two inch accumulated on the ground. We headed out in Rodney’s car with the goal of looking at our future house before signing the papers to purchase. We got only about a block away down the snowy streets, however, when a red SUV coming from the other direction did a 360 right in front of us. I turned to Rodney and asked if we should just go back….this was not a good omen. He assured me that the more traveled streets would not be so icy. He was correct but there were some scary areas of snow drift on the way. I drove my husband crazy with “Watch out!”, “Slow down.”, “That looks icy!, punctuated by the quick sucking in of air whenever anyone got close to us. We did get our grocery shopping done, saw our future home, and made our way over to the model homes to sign the papers. Mission accomplished. Our house hunting is over…not a moment too soon. We were getting very discouraged. With house prices higher in this area than in our previous area, Jackson, GA, we were concerned that we would be getting much less house for much more money. As it ends, we ARE paying a lot more, but we are getting a lot more. One good outcome of the diving real estate market – we got a great deal on a brand new house. The builders are having to dump newly built houses for the same price as some 15 year old houses of the same square footage! The bad news – we are most likely going to have to sell our house for less than what we owe. *sigh* For a little while we will be the owners of two houses. Rodney said take a photo of him right now…this will be the only time he will be able to say he owns two houses… his new home and his “southern” home. So while we acclimate to our new surroundings, make plans for getting into our new home before the end of the year, and start meeting the locals, we will admire the new white powdery scenery adding new meaning to many of the Christmas songs on the radio…..”Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve no place to go….let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”