The snow that's coming, and snow from the past...

We've had some snow and ice and dangerous driving conditions already, but I'm getting nervous for tomorrow. The forecast is nasty, I need snow tires for my car, and I have places to go. I'm trying to cheer myself up by remembering the good things about snow... but other than how pretty it looks though a window when you're in a warm house, I'm not really a fan.

Ali came to visit us in Michigan in 2005, and we all drove up to Minnesota together to visit Ben's family for Christmas.

Two things stand out in my memory from that trip. The first is that we wanted to give her an awesome Chicago style deep dish pizza experience and stopped on the way home to get one near Chicago, not realizing that they sell them half baked for takeaway and you are meant to cook them at home... we knew it was risky trying to eat it in the car anyway (we couldn't stop because we had Brodie with us and couldn't leave him in the car) but trying to eat it half cooked was quite the challenge. We thought that the restaurant messed it up, but we learned later that everyone knows you're meant to finish baking it at home! Not a good experience!

The other thing that stands out is this... further proof that snow is a dangerous playmate.

My favorite part of this video, after the spectacular wipeout, is the small child (Ryan?) hurrying over to make sure she's ok!

I hope tomorrow's snow related experiences will be less unpleasant!

All about Ali

Some of you have met my sister Alison. Some of you may even be related to her. This post is for her.

(She's in the middle)

Alison was born on April 17th 1988. She's 21 right now and is 5 years younger than me. I don't really remember her being born, or being a baby, but I remember we used to play with Barbies and our dolls house a lot when she was older. Here's a fun fact about Ali... none of my barbies could ever wear shoes. Why? Not because we lost them, but because Ali chewed all of their feet off.

Despite this, I loved having a little sister. I also have two brothers, and we needed to present a united front to keep them in check. She was also useful in that she'd run to the shop next door and buy me twixes. In that way having a little sister was way more useful than having a husband because she was much more willing to run to the shop for me :-)

Ali has always been brave. She decided that she wanted to do something exciting before starting university and went to Argentina to teach english for a few months. She had all kinds of adventures there, including losing a shoe on a bus and having to hop around when she reached her destination until she found a shoe shop.

And you'd have to be brave to leave the house looking like this...

She's also kind and generous. She is a great Auntie. She works very hard and is very clever. In a few years she will be a doctor.

As part of her journey towards becoming a doctor Alison is going to Nepal. She's going in April with H.E.L.P. Scotland Society, an Aberdeen University organization. While they are there they will be working with PSD Nepal helping in rural healthcare centers. In the time before she leaves, she has also been working with a team to raise money for two rural health camps which will provide healthcare to those who currently have absolutely no access to healthcare.

(This is a school) (picture source)

One of the requirements Ali needs to meet before going is to raise a certain amount of money to donate to these health camps, and THAT is why I am telling you all about this. If you'd like to make a contribution to help provide health care to people in Nepal you can do so through paypal using Ali's email address: alison.a.law.06 (at) aberdeen.ac.uk (replace the word "at" with @ to email her, I wrote it like that to try to cut down on spam to her).

If you send her something, thank you for your generosity! Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed this blog all about my little sister.

Yep, I guess they'll let anyone be a doctor these days ;-)