Clark in March

I made a concerted effort to get us outside in March, with some success.  Prior to this hike we'd spent about 20 hours outdoors, and walked about 15 miles, mostly in the neighborhood.  The weather remained unusually cold, and our tallies included quite a bit of time shoveling, sledding, and herding ice.  We sorely lacked in the woods department though.  I was eminently conscious of the depth of the snow, and didn't want to get Frankie in over his head again, like on our snowshoeing adventure in December.  We finally got a day with both sunshine and above-freezing temperatures, so we headed back to Clark.  

Barry Park

In terms of spending time outdoors, this has been a rough winter for us.  January was officially The Month of Sick: I had influenza, which took me out of commission for several weeks, and Frankie, the poor kid, had everything else.  Unfortunately, I'm only half joking.  He had an ear infection, and a salivary gland infection, and strep throat, and a horrible allergic reaction to a penicillin-based antibiotic that made him miserably inflamed and itchy for almost two weeks.  February was better health-wise, tempered only by the on again off again cold that seems to be a permanent feature of preschool.  But the weather was brutal.  I generally hold to the principle that there is no bad weather, just inappropriate clothing, but February really put that theory to the test.  It was the coldest month in recorded history here, with an average temperature of 9 degrees, never mind the wind chills.  It's hard not to worry about frostbite in such conditions, so instead of romping in the snow, we spent an obscene amount of time playing with Legos.  And I started going completely stir crazy.