Blizzard!!

Sidney and I then headed to my parents' house in the midst of an icy and snowy weather event. To fully wake me up, I had a Sidney blueberry muffin for breakfast. 

We then set out, and a drive that normally takes about 40 minutes took just under an hour. But we made it. Soon after we got there, it started snowing on top the ice that already covered the driveway, which made for great fun:

Initially, we were going to head up to Big Lake for my dad's family's Christmas family reunion, but the roads were too slippery and there were too many accidents to risk the drive. But sliding on snow and/or ice is one of my favorite winter pastimes. I can recall many days of winters past that I would spend running and sliding down snowy sidewalks, the sides of stairs, and down snowy hills on my feet. Sure, there were a few falls, but that's just part of it. I even taught Andrew the joy that is sliding in the snow.

But sliding aside, another pleasure I like to partake in is the eating of cookies. Interestingly, Sidney had made a whole batch of cookie for our family Christmas reunion, and since we couldn't go to that, we had a whole tub of cookies that were all ours!

We also had a cake that my parents had made! We were in dessert heaven due to the weather.

My dad made his black oil cake, and my mom made some cream cheese frosting. The cake fell a little in the middle, so that made for some extra thick frosting in the middle! I'm not complaining!

I had a smallish piece since I didn't want to ruin my dinner!

We then ventured across the street to our local Irish pub.

I ordered a Scotch egg for an appetizer.

And, keeping with the authentic Irish cuisine, I ordered their prime rib special with mashed potatoes and french fries.

The steak wasn't the best I'd ever had, but I didn't expect it to be. It was still good, though. My only complaint is that au jus was a little weak. The fries were really good, and for them I ordered some ketchup (homemade), ranch, and mayonnaise.

By the time we left the restaurant, it was a veritable blizzard outside. It wasn't necessarily snowing that hard, but it was snowing nevertheless. The wind was blowing at what seemed like 100 mph, and it was cold. Like, really cold. Like so cold that it was uncomfortable to be outside for more than 1 ms. Plus, the wind was blowing already fallen snow around, which only made things worse. So all I wanted to do was go home and eat cake. So I did.

This cake and frosting combination led me to proclaim that cream cheese frosting is my new favorite frosting. It's not so sweet that it gets to be too rich, and it just tastes so good because cream cheese. Seriously, that's the only explanation required. Cream cheese frosting is the best frosting because cream cheese.