Dear Mr. Groundhog,

I don’t usually write letters to complain about someone’s job performance, but I’ve had enough. Actually, I believe I’m speaking for a lot of others when I say this too.

I’m sick of winter.

Granted, I have never been a big fan of the cold, dreary, bleak days that seem to drag on and on and on. And this year, for some reason, it just seems a lot worse.

I know you come out every year around Feb. 2 for your annual dog-and-pony show. I also know that if we’d just look at the calendar, we’d already know that on Feb. 2, it’s kind of a given that we’ll have six more weeks of winter. So I suppose I know already that winter isn’t your fault, but I’ve got to have someone to blame.

Our kids were thrilled Sunday night and Monday morning to see more snow, begging to get out the gloves, hats, snowsuits and sleds for a few more fun trips down the front hill. My husband and I, however, were not amused.

We’ve tried to be good sports this winter and have tried to compensate for the lack of outdoor fun and daylight hours by coming up with lots of fun activities.

We’ve cut and colored snowflakes, painted figurines and my children have painted themselves. We’ve stamped and colored. We’ve read books and have made books out of folded, crayon-scribbled paper.

We’ve practiced writing our alphabet and our numbers and we’ve learned to draw stick people – complete with bowties for the boys and hair bows for the girls.

We’ve learned to be thankful with Madame Blueberry and sailed the seas with Sinbad. We’ve been entertained by a sheep-herding pig named Babe and are about sick of that annoying red puppet Elmo and his silly songs.

We’ve baked cookies – sugar cookies and chocolate chip, and lots of them. We even made Valentine houses out of heart-shaped sugar cookies and lots of pink frosting. We’ve baked cookies for daycare, bagged candy and made Valentines for everyone we know and some we don’t.

Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Groundhog, we’ve had our share of fun. I won’t say spending time with our kids isn’t fun.

However, our inner rebels came out this weekend and we decided enough was enough.

We’re sick of being cooped up in our house and decided to go for our fair-weather favorite stroll. We bundled up the kids in hats, gloves and coats and covered them with a warm blanket as they rode in style in their two-seater stroller. They had a great time singing “Jingle Bells” in their “open sleigh” as the snow fell all around us.

Furthermore, when we came back and the girls thawed out in the bathtub from our wintertime stroll, one opted to wear (in the house, of course) a tropical print sundress and the other went for a bathing suit and high heels.

And on Saturday night, we decided to grill our steaks on the outdoor grill. Never mind the cold temperatures and wind chill factor – we did it. Take that, Mr. Groundhog.

But we’ll be OK with a few more weeks of winter. We haven’t quite colored every piece of paper in the house and there are a few kids’ movies we’ve only seen 999 times instead of 1,000. Further, our oldest is still working to perfect her “rock star” moves and our youngest hasn’t quite put all the ponytail holders in the house on her stuffed puppy.

And we haven’t memorized every children’s book we have and we have not cooked everything in the pantry yet.

So, the long and short of it is this, Mr. Groundhog. While we may have to endure a few more weeks of winter, we don’t have to like it. Sure, our kids will think we enjoy it as much as they do and we’ll come up with lots more fun stuff to do.

But take this warning to heart, Mr. Groundhog. If I ever see your furry tail on our property, just remember I believe in the Second Amendment.

Best wishes for a happy winter and warmest regards,

Kim Wehmer

Cold, grouchy publisher extraordinaire