The Old Man is Snoring (and rambling.....)

After a January that seemed more like summer (thank you, Global Warming), winter has finally hit us. Or what can be defined as winter in Northern California. It's raining. A lot.

I don't mind.

Being cozy in the house, reading books, drawing pictures, playing hide-and-seek, lying on the couch. I especially like the last one. It takes weeks of enforced play indoors to give me cabin fever. I love being outdoors, but indoors works for me too. My lazy side gets a full work out.

On Monday, it was crisp and clear and we couldn't do anything else but be outside. Since then, it has turned chilly and rained buckets, and we've spent our time making brief forays out into the rain, buying new summer sandals at Target for our Florida trip next month, and eating way too many cookies.

I spend a lot of time on rainy days looking out the window.

I do worry that the confused plum blossoms which are busting out in our garden won't last til spring now that winter has decided to have another go.

Here's the wet garden and how it looks outside from inside.

That silver giraffe is the bane of my existence. It merits a blog post all to itself. My Englishman bought it two summers ago thinking it would be fun for Sweetpea and add a certain je ne sais quoi to our garden. It somehow ended up on the deck outside the kitchen window where it balefully looks in at me (with a birthday hat still jauntily perched from November), and where maybe twice a year Sweetpea sits on it. And occasionally my best friend's two year old who is obsessed with giraffes. Don't get me started.

After a very wet morning, we spent a quiet Valentine's Day cleaning the guinea pig's cage which was wayyy overdue for some attention, then running some errands and later playing a rousing game of "Guess The Animal" after dinner, which is Sweetpea's version of 20 Questions.

Here's us teaming up against English Daddy who needed a few hints to guess that we were Madeline and Genevieve. Okay, so tonight it wasn't strictly guessing the animal.

And that, my friends, is the kind of rambling blog post you get when the author starts it at 10 in the morning, takes pictures throughout the day (with some obviously taken by the Englishman), and finally finishes it at 11 p.m. while watching a taped episode of Top Chef.

I bid you good night.