Snow Days and the Sled That Didn't Budge 🛷

Happy Saturday friends!

We had snow this week! So much snow that they canceled school for two days, calling Sunday night and Monday night in preparation for the scary roads. Whew, lots of prep!

This is what it looked like Tuesday morning, not sure how we're going to recover:

Yep, that's actual snow on top of that umbrella! 😂 

And in a Facebook memory, this picture popped up from our first winter on the Colorado farm in 2016:

Geared up and ready to go out to do morning chores in the actual snow ;-) 

And then I saw this meme:

I lived in a snowy area for 18 years and felt like it was that left side the whole time even when we lived on a farm but that's probably because:
A. We lived in Longmont, Colorado where the sun shines 300+ days a year
B. It rarely snowed like in Ohio or Erie or Upstate New York
C. We had a tractor on the farm to move snow
D. I love the cold
E. I love snow
F. I love snow
G. I love snow 😁

How about you? Love it? Hate it? I posted that on Nextdoor and Facebook and read all kinds of fun stories about people living in the snow, including a woman whose father hung out with Eskimos in Alaska and knew how to build igloos! OMG! How cool would that be! They would build an igloo in the winter with a fire pit and she said it was toasty warm in there!

My brother responded with a funny story that I hadn't thought of in such a long time:

"Dad building us a 40 lbs sled out of scrap lumber and we hiked it to the Maplewood hill and got ready to go down thinking it was going to be like a Griswald Family Christmas situation and we would just rocket down the hill…only to sit on it and it just sank down in the snow like an anchor. "

Ahhhh the good old days! 

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Out in the world and in my Women's Circle, I'm running across so many women who have had it with doing everything for Christmas while everyone in the family enjoys the fruits of her labor but doesn't chip in. They even made a movie about it this year with Michelle Pfeiffer called Oh. What. Fun. (She looks fabulous by the way.) If you're a mom working your butt off right now and feeling underappreciated by your family, watch it, it's on Amazon Prime for free! 

In my little world, the days were flying by and no tree was happening without me complaining about it. This year I added a touch of guilt (not my finest moment) and ta-da:

I wonder if they would be surprised if Christmas Eve came and there wasn't a tree set up. I think they actually might. ManChild used to love helping me decorate the tree:

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The forest is safe to walk in once more now that we've had below freezing nights, yay! Ticks be gone! So I Love Lucy and The Polar Bear go for walks with me to see what we can see. Lot's of moss right now:

And interesting twining things, probably muscadine grapevines:

It makes me very happy to see out into the forest so far:

It's the time of year where our Whitetail Deer start to band back together after breaking off to have their babies in the late spring. In the late fall, all of those moms and babies come back together and spend the winter as a herd. Every few days I'll look out into the forest in our backyard and see a good dozen of them ghosting by, so cool.

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Sweetness was asking to go outside the pasture and be free for a while. Sometimes he comes to the gate when it's time to go back in, but mostly I walk out around the other side of him and gently herd him back. He walks back to the gate and waits for me to open it. He is such a good donkey! He feels like he has to help me, to remind me that he wants to go out, so he follows along at my side while I pick up empty hay bags—and waits next to me so I can lay them across his back. At each pickup point he stops and waits. Gawd. Precious.

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I have no idea how this happened but it was interesting to see:

That's a piece of pine cone impaled by a yucca plant!

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I love watering plants and finding Mom's little goodies placed inside:

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Visiting a neighbor and found ferns growing in their steps, oooo pretty!

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B-Rad and I were out driving around on Friday and found this little back road that we'd never been down. Blast from the past! This was the way all roads except highways looked when I moved here the first time back in 1983. Just a gauntlet of trees and a strip of sky. I really don't miss that at all:

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And finally, because it makes me smile so big, my new license plate arrived! Seems fitting as the artsy "mom" of The Mother Ranch, no?

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Name and format change! From Women's Online Circles to Women's Online Creative Circles:

When I first imagined an online version of a women's circle, I planned something that looked a lot like the in-person circles—an online group space, videos of weekly meditations with the herd, check-ins, and reflections between sessions.

But as the weeks wore on, something became very clear.

What women were craving wasn’t more structure or another place to keep up. Lord, who needs that in this day and age? They were craving simplicity, a creative pause, and a place to slow down, make something with their hands, and connect—all without any pressure.

And just as importantly, I realized that art is my clearest doorway for this work.

So I’ve shifted the online offering into what I’m now calling Women’s Online Creative Circles.

These circles are still about connection and meaning—but the center is creativity. We meet live on Zoom each Monday evening in January 7:30-9pm ET, open with a simple minute or two grounding, paint together (I walk you through it step by step) in a relaxed, conversational space, and let whatever wants to come up, come up. There’s no online group or weekly videos to keep up with, and no heavy processing. Just art, conversation, and space to listen to your Inner Voice.

This also brings clearer distinction between my offerings:

• Women’s In-Person Circles are deeper gatherings held at The Mother Ranch, blending art, reflection, and the herd.

• Women’s Online Creative Circles are lighter, art centered gatherings—creative, accessible, and designed for fitting into your life while in your jammies.

Thank you for being here, for trusting the process, and for allowing my work to evolve in real time! If this new group seems to fit you better too, you can sign up for the first 4 week session here! The first one is all about creating Vision Cards for the new year, it's 4 weeks long, and $140. 

THE MEMES:

Or, no matter your age, "When was the date of your last menstrual cycle?"

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This is an AI-free newsletter! While I love to use AI to help me figure out a piece of software I don't understand, my intention is to use it to help me with the drudgery, never with writing, art, creation. All em dashes are intentional and mine, I was using them way before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman's eye :-)

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Thank you for reading :-)

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