Surviving Winter 2014

It’s probably a little too late to warn you about letting your faucets drip in subzero temperatures, so this is simply a collection of fun things to do with family and friends when you’re cooped up inside together. Seriously, don’t spend this time alone if you can help it. Find a way to join up with a friendly family or group of friends.

This morning I saw that a friend had invited any of her friends without power to come over to her house for homemade waffles. (Use social media to either open up your home or let people know you need a friend!)

Personally, I find this weather too cold for sledding or for snow ball fights–at least for those you truly love. However, it’s a great time for classic card games like Rook, Monopoly and old parlor games like “Kahootz.”
Down below the first video, you’ll see some fun games listed. Don’t miss the game, Kingdoms.

My friend Nate Crum visited the Jones family in Missouri a few years ago and family gatherings have never been the same ever since. It’s a name/memory game, but don’t let that scare you–it’s a fantastic game for all ages. I explain:

What fun things does your family do when it becomes deadly cold?

We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal. – Somewhere in Moby Dick by Herman Melville

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