Hi there.

It’s been snowing since I woke this morning. It’s pretty – this fresh, currently clean snow – and on these days I’m thankful that I did my grocery run yesterday so there’s no reason for me to load my two charges into a car that needs to be cleaned off to go anywhere.

The few years of working — when work was 1/4 mile away from where I lived and most days I walked there (my life has always been so… easy.), I used to grumble on these days and be openly frustrated as stay-at-home-mom after stay-at-home-mom posted to the world wide web about how amazingly splendid these snowy, chilly days were. Yeah, sure, you can enjoy it because you get to stay in your slippers all day long while the rest of us tie up our boots and scrape ice off our windshields. Easy for you to celebrate the wonders of winter.

I know. Great attitude. I’m really sorry for how much growing I needed to do at twenty.

I especially hang my head in shame since here I am now, a stay-at-home-mom, and the only time I start to be done with winter is on the days it’s too frigid to take my two sweets outdoors and the cooped-up-ness starts to bring out extra mischief from the toddler (Because, please, we have enough mischief in our house. I don’t need more medicine bins pulled out, walls drawn on, or “tricks” that involve convincing the baby brother to jump off our toy chest into the waiting — but not strong enough — arms of the toddler brother.). Otherwise, I stay in my slippers and post to the world wide web about how pretty freshly fallen snow is.

Basically, I wasn’t very good at rejoicing with all the blessed women who could stay put in their warm homes these days.

I’d like to think I’ve grown up a lot in that area since those days of working in a little gray office. But oh my, if this winter has done anything for me, it’s shown just how much I need to continue growing. In so many areas. The good news is that I want to. I wince as emotions and habits are being revealed for what they really are — sin in my life. I am thankful that as I go through this pruning time, my church is also starting a series on the Holy Spirit. How I need His constant power in my life.

So there’s that. Snow and slippers and growth and Holy Spirit empowering us to break away from areas of sin.

There’s also all the cooking that goes into this season. I love summertime food, and I think I would be fine barbecuing some sort of meat and serving it over salad almost every single night, but I do love that my pots and pans and oven get a bit more use during these colder, darker months. I thought I would share a few favorites — although I sometimes hesitate to give out recipes since I don’t normally follow them completely as written, but that should make you feel at liberty to tweak to your liking as well!

And pizza dough that’s become our favorite for when we have Friday night pizza!