Is spring coming?

Well... It's snowing again, or still, or whatever.  Anyway, the permafrost is still in effect.  We're surviving though, and having a good time. 

I don't even remember where we were going here, probably Brookton's Market.  Indy loves to ride in the car and be the special child.  This was one of those days where it was wintery in look, but warm in feel.  Windows down, blowin' the stink off.

Rambo continues to be the man.  We see him every weekend, often for grooming and hanging out.  We give lots of hugs and get lots of snuffling.  I'm feeling pretty melancholy about the upcoming spring.  It's so different without Murph, and while Rambo will still go, we're doing short rides on the road where he is safe and won't trip.  Riding Bodie is a lot like work, too.  Still, it's great to have him around, and he continues to bring happiness into our hearts.

Jonas and I are both getting a little chunky, so we have gone for a few walks recently.  Obviously I wasn't keeping pace.  You can see the impatience in his stance. 

One morning a couple weeks ago I went for my final x-country ski trip of the season.  It was warm and all the snow was packed down by the snowmobiles so I decided to carry my skis to the top of the hill and ski down.  It was pretty fast and good fun.

We really live in a beautiful place.

The next day, Nathan came down and we went out to Pat's to play in the woods.  Marjie got Nathan a pair of snowshoes for Christmas or something.  He hadn't used them much, so we got suited up and went out scouting for trees and practicing on the snowshoes.  Nathan found them cumbersome and awkward and decided not to wear them to carry the saw out on the next trip.  He stuck with that plan until his first step into the snow when he sunk thigh deep.  I guess those things really do work!

Nathan bought a two-man cross cut saw from a guy on e-bay, and we were super excited to use it.  It's a vintage piece, but in great condition.  It's about 4 and a half feet long and looks really impressive.  So we found a tree that Pat and I had marked, and I used the axe to open up a face cut.  Then we busted out the saw and took half a dozen powerful strokes before the handles fell off.  Turns out the threads in the handles were stripped... So... now we had a standing tree half cut through and no saw.

So I got the opportunity to cut down my first tree with an axe.  Things were going pretty well until the axe head sheared off and sent flying.  After retrieving my other axe, I finished the job.

In the end, the tree fell perfectly and had one of the better hinges I've ever cut.  It's clear why someone thought up the chainsaw, though.

On another recent day, we met up with Sarah's friend, Amanda, and her family out at GP.  Paiton (Amanda's daughter) had never skied before, so we spent the day on the green hills.  It was a lot of fun, just skiing around casually together.

Jonas and I went for a little walk on Cayuga Lake.  Here's a picture of the puppy-man making snow-dog-angels.

These two pictures are from the Carnegie Library on Syracuse University.  Vinnie and I went up there for a social studies conference last weekend.

"New" project.

The sheared double bit.

Shaping the handle.

 

Hanging the axe.