Throwback Thurs - Cleveland in the Summer.

So.  You guys.  THIS WINTER IS INSANE.  I can't even with it anymore.  We've maxed out our snow days and it's only January.  Between the snowstorm and the extreme, extreme cold the kids went from Saturday to today without leaving the house.  I'm trying to keep them creatively occupied and not plugged in but SERIOUSLY.

We've baked:

We've made snow ice cream.  We've played with all of the toys.  We've played all of the games.

We've done this:

I don't even know anymore.

We had some friends over and set up a bounce house in the basement:

GET YOUR ENERGY OUT, KIDS.

What, did you think I'd not want to get in on that fun?

And we made paper flowers to bring some outside into our house:

And then I realized that I was literally taking parenting advice from Flowers in the Attic*.  LITERALLY:

"we were never to color even one of our paper blossoms yellow."

So before I busted out the powered sugar doughnuts I thought it would be nice to have a reminder that this is not forever. That we do not live in a frozen tundra.  That Cleveland is not, in fact, an Arctic wasteland.  It just feels that way for a few months of the year.  In fact Lake Erie can even feel straight up tropical:

Pictured:  The tropics.

Can you feel that tropical breeze?

So instead of posting any more frozen pictures may I present:

Throwback Thursday Cleveland Summer Edition.

These pictures were taken on August 24th of last year.  So only 159 days ago.

Look the little guy is outside!  In the sunshine!  Not buried under piles of "he can get frostbite with less than 5 minutes of exposed skin" blankets!

The same date in 2014 is only 207 days from right now.

 

There will be warm again.  The sun will come out.

 

The lake will thaw.

And this winter isolation and cabin fever will end.

And I promise this summer I will never bitch about how "awful" it is to get sand in the car.

*So who else hate-watched Flowers in the Attic?  Who else read that story as a preteen?  And maybe a few other VC Andrews tales?  I'm rereading it again now after a fantastic twitter discussion of the Lifetime version and I have some THOUGHTS.  One of which is that maybe I shouldn't be reading a book about children being locked inside while literally trapped inside with my children.  Although maybe I should just lean into this horror stories mimicking real life thing and read the Shining next and then NEVER SLEEP AGAIN.  I mean my basement windows are completely snowed over... it kindof feels like the Overlook down there...