Jeremiah and the kids by the frozen pond on Thanksgiving Day. The spring and summer it's filled up to the point they couldn't stand in there like that. In fact, where I am taking this photo at would be about the edge. It is frozen over now though.
What I'm "pouring" off the bucks water every morning.
I keep saying, "It's getting cold." People look at me funny which tells me this is nothin'. So I ask, "Well then, what's cold?" The answers, oh the answers...
It's always, "This has been a mild fall" and "It's not cold yet." "Oh really?", I say, but I never get a straight answer as to what's really cold. I want to know, specifically, as in temperature. What's considered cold, what's average, and what have we gotten ourselves into?
I've started being more specific since "cold" is different to each person. Cold to Drew's bus driver is 0, as in ZERO degrees...during the day...for days! As in, one less degree than 1 and one more than negative one, WHILE THE SUN'S SUPPOSED TO BE OUT! I'd say that's COLD (!!!!!!!!!!!) and not just cold. As in, there should be some offensive profane words, as in not just one would do, before COLD.
Saturday there was a ribbon cutting ceremony at Hutch High. I was talking to a gal and again the old stand by question came up since it was SUCH a lovely day out..."It's a lovely day out but I am bracing for the winter." I say. She says something to the affect that Kansas does not get winter, she grew up in Iowa and there's a winter. Well, count me out of Iowa...there's one less Californian they'll have to worry about! Though I am sure they don't see too many of them anyway (since I am sure most Californian's think Iowa is probably near Peru or somewhere) and if they did, they wouldn't consider them long term residents since one winter there, if they made it that long, would see them driving their hippy tree huggin',SUV drivin', sun lovin' think they know what a cold winter is asses selves back to the West Coast and not living in the middle of nowherePeru Iowa.
"Average December, January and February temps are in the 30's", and that's mild to Andrew's teacher who's lived here her whole life. "OH GOD..." I think to myself, "...that's a high day time temp???" "Yeah,..." Drew's teacher goes on to say, "...last year it was like 10 degrees for a month straight [HIGH day time temp.] It was so cold it just made you sick when you went outside." I think, "It made you sick when you went outside??? I'm sick just contemplating the thought!" I'm so sick, in fact, that I think I'll have to go home and shove as much wood into the wood burning stove and keep it that full whilst it burns until July of next year just because it's going to take a few weeks to get it a decent temperature enough to survive and I'll need at least a month to recover...and it's only 50 degrees out right now!
So, I'm compiling a mental list of what the average winter here is like and scaring myself into thinking we're going to freeze to death! The sane part of knows we won't, well, at least I HOPE not, but good God, seriously...a blizzard in April? St. Patrick's Day in California Rachel is was wearing a sleeveless dress and the grass is was green and we have had nothing but the hot dry summer ahead! Forget about April [rain] showers bringing May flowers here, we may be looking forward to April white out conditions, shoveling snow to get out of the driveway, wearing wool socks to bed and dreaming about hot chocolate!
Oh dear, we're done for! See you next summer....maybe.
Halloween photos for your viewing pleasure. Rachel went as Tinkerbell and Drew went as Cpt. Hook before he met up with the crocodile.
We took the children to the Zoo here in town actually. It's a quint little zoo and from 4-6 PM they handed out candy and had some of their animals out of their enclosures for the kids to pet.
The kids had a lot of fun. All in all I am Halloween-ed out as our festivities started on Friday with the kids parties at school.
We went to the Salthawk's football game on Friday night. It was COLD! Salthawks won but it was a close game. I think they tried as hard as they could to loose but managed to hang on through every fumble and interception. Fortunately for "us", the other team liked having additional players on the field who couldn't get off fast enough before the flags from the refs started flying, that was "our"saving grace for part of it.
The kids fell asleep shortly after half time so at least we got to watch part of the game in peace. The whole first half their candy induced spastic behavior had us saying "settle down" every second and a half! Fortunately for us there were young children all around so no one noticed our heathens hyper children too much except for the poor guy in front of us who got kicked in the back I don't know how many times! Fortunately, he was a dad too with a boy of about 12 with him so it hadn't been that long ago he was in our same predicament position. I told him he could turn around and slap the perps who kick him, I just hoped it wouldn't accidentally be me!
The second half of the game was peaceful, uncomfortable with kids laying up against our shoulders drooling and spewing hot nacho cheese, salty pretzel and pepsi breath in our face when we looked down to smile at our sleeping angels, but peaceful nonetheless. I don't know which was the better trade off.
Speaking of heathens, I mean angels, here they are now...
P.S. Yes, I made their costumes...on Thursday no less! Both of them were patterns I did freehand so I'm pretty impressed and proud! ::taking a bow:: Pats on the back are appreciated, thank you thank you.
Drew just wore brown pants. I had wanted to make Bermuda style pants with elastic at the knee so he could wear white knee socks and felt boot looking socks over his real shoes and really look the part but I doubt he woulda gone for all that. As it was, I had to try to coerce him into not wanting to be Cpt. hook and just be a plain pirate since I wasn't up for actually making a hook but it wouldn't fly. We settled for being Cpt. Hook BEFORE he lost his hand. It works.
Getting used to a new cold seems to the be the name of the game today. I've have weather on my mind since we moved here and have somewhat dreaded thinking about the impending cold weather.
All I keep hearing is that so far it's been a mild fall. One year they had so much snow on Halloween they had to cancel it! Am I making it up to be a bigger deal than it is??? God knows I haven't seen a real winter in like...well, ever! In a land where 40's is a high during the day in the winter, that's cold for me! Sure, I've been to the snow but I can't help but brace myself for this impending doomsday season that inevitably is coming ::Jaws theme music::.
It's November 1. They* say it's going to make it up to 63 today. I highly doubt that! I went out this morning to feed the goats in a cotton t-shirt and a light sweatshirt over that. I told myself that if it was anything more than 45 I would be really really upset! If it was in the 30's though, I'd be relieved knowing it was cold but that it wasn't so cold that it was unmanageable for me. As it was, it was like 43 but with the windchill it felt like 34 so I was pretty ecstatic knowing that it wasn't actually a silly temperature like 55 and there I was thinking it had to have been 32!
*Whoever they are.
The goats are fluffing up, green grass is all but gone. Kids are bundling up to head off to school and I've got soups and homemade bread on the brain!
