Yesterday the girls Facetimed my in-laws to show them their new rooms. Their grandparents are spending the first three months or so of 2025 in the desert, away from the frigid temperature that is North Dakota. As their granddaughters pointed the phone toward their new purple walls, their grandparents talked to them about the pool and the nice weather and the hikes they are going on.  This weekend they will meet up with other North Dakotans who have fled to the south to survive the winter.

Meanwhile, back at home, we’re in the middle of the hardest three months. Between the dark and the cold, the taxes, the constant little illnesses and my husband working outside in the volatile weather, these are the days convincing the kids to get out of their warm beds and out the door is a bit more challenging.  One day on our drive to town we watched the temperature fall as the sun rose, a whole ten degrees in a matter of minutes. From 2 to -8.  No outside recess this morning, Rosie declared.

Anyway, the goal here isn’t a public complaint about North Dakota in January. If you’re reading this, you likely know what we’re in for and have long accepted it like the rest of us. But lately I’ve been thinking about the little ways I can make our already pretty good lives better and more bearable during these cold months when escaping to Arizona isn’t an option for us.

And maybe it’s more of a resolution thing, like how can we love one another better? Who doesn’t need a little extra dose of it these days, no matter the weather. If I were a magazine writer I would come up with a tidy little “How to love January” list for you, but honestly, I don’t think there’s anything tidy about my life, so I’ll just start with

Number 1: The Cooking. Lately I have had cravings for fresh vegetables and new seasonings, which is the opposite of the usual noodles and cream I want to hunker down with in the cold months. But these cravings have sent me to the kitchen with a little more enthusiasm to try a new recipe and to the grocery store to purchase ingredients I don’t keep in my cupboard. In the past few weeks of this month, between my oldest daughter’s interest in her new cookbook and my online searches, we’ve tried out five or six new recipes. Some were wins. Some were too spicy for my Midwestern pallet, and, well, our new brownie recipe was a downright flop. But it has been fun. The reward is always to see what my husband thinks. And to give him a hot meal after a long day in the cold makes me feel valuable and helpful and makes him feel cared for. Bonus is that he does the dishes and that he always gives everything a thumbs-up. Except the brownies, no one could stand behind those things. 

Which brings me to Number 2: The games. Over the Christmas break the girls got a few new board and card games and so we’ve tried them out only to be reminded that the only thing our daughters want in the entire world is to play games with us. Honestly. It’s as simple as that. So we’ve taught them how to play Spoons and they taught us how to play “Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza.” And if we have time for nothing else, we whip out the trivia at supper time and they’re plum happy and so are we. Games are love.

And so is snuggling, which is my number three. Intentional lingering in a hug and more of them. Movies picked out together instead of watched on separate screens in separate rooms. Sitting closer in the house. Sometimes, for someone like me who is just fine with having a wide swath of space around me, I need to be more intentional with the affection, for my family and for myself.

And then sometimes, when it’s not twenty below, we need to get our butts outside together, not just for work, but for play too. Over break I helped the girls build a couple snowmen in the yard. I had plenty of shoveling to do, but I skipped that to roll giant snowballs with them instead and it was great, of course, because building a snowman is always great. And then I took off for a walk in the hills to fill my lungs with cold air and get the blood pumping. Which is my number four. Getting my butt moving. Seasonal depression is a real thing for me and that’s why I have a treadmill and the hills. My husband and I have a loose goal of running a little race this spring (and when I say run, I mean more of a slow jog. And when I say loose, I mean we’re not aiming for any marathons here.) The two of us haven’t had a shared couple goal outside of family and business in our almost twenty years of marriage, so overcoming our shared hatred of running feels like a little thing that can connect us. How romantic.

Which brings me to the sweetness. Which is number five and maybe the most important. I have enough hustle in my life, deadlines and goals and the day to day we’ve built that keep me up at night. Stress. We all have it. And it sucks more when you can’t have a backyard barbeque or get vitamin D from the sun. So I am going to try to dig a little more gentleness out of myself to see what comes back to me in the next few months. In my tone of voice and the way I brush their hair, making his coffee and fixing their meals. Our meals. It’s for me too. The tenderness.

Except maybe when we’re playing Spoons. All bets are off then. Who needs the desert when you have a kitchen table card game and better brownies in the oven? 30 below zero, you don’t stand a chance.