Here I am!

I truly have not been hibernating. I have been freezing my butt off (ok, not really - I just looked behind me and it's still there. Sigh. Kinda wish it would really work.) We had ANOTHER snow storm. What's another 20 inches when you already have snow up to your knees.

Broke out the snow shoes again.

Forget your tread mill and exercising in your fancy leotards at the gym. Want a real work out? Put on 3 layers of clothes. Then your jacket, snow pants, hat, mittens and snow shoes. Then haul 3 bales of hay out into the field of almost butt deep snow. And throw the individual flakes around so the horses don't attack each other when they eat.

That's enough exercise to take care of even the most hardened gym buff. But don't stop there! Go back in the barn and pick up the 15 gallon ice pops in the buckets. Take them outside and use the side of the hammer (thank you) and smack the ice out of the buckets. Bonus if you don't smash your fingers while you do it. It really doesn't hurt until you get inside, though, and thaw out.

If you still need more, go back in the barn and bring your poop sled with you. No, not the ones the kids will ride down the hill, but the one you bought to replace the wheelbarrow that doesn't work so well in the snow. Go into the stall with your warm mittens on and try to pick up frozen poops off the floor. No, no, silly. NOT with your mittens. With the poop fork. Ok, that doesn't work, so you put on the gloves with the little grippers on the palms so you can hold the fork handle, but now your hands are getting cold. Here's your dilemma.. hands warm, can't hold fork... hands cold, get stalls cleaned faster. Nope. No happy medium on this one. The poop balls sound like billiard balls crashing around in the sled.

After getting on and off your snowshoes four or five times - that's how many trips you have to make in and out of the barn dragging the sled to the manure pile outside - you can stop counting the calories you have burned.

By this time, my glasses are usually so fogged up so I take them off. Can't do that no more. I can't ever remember where I put them and I can't see them without finding my glasses to find them.

Wrestle around big, bulky bags of shavings. Dump them in to the stalls and spread them around a little bit.

By then my nose is as red as Rudolphs, running to beat the band, and I'm so cold that I don't think I'll even thaw by the wood stove.

But we haven't even got finished with the chores yet. That's just the morning routine. I'm headed to the barn to do night chores now. We'll talk about that tomorrow!

:)