Winter Finally Arrives

Until Friday evening, our Missoula winter had yet to arrive. Last week when we cut our Christmas tree, the day was 50 degrees and we were shedding coats, the children pulling their sled through mud. On Friday night, however, the weather finally caught up with us and the thermometer has since been hovering around zero with a wind chill far into the negative twenties. We woke on Saturday morning to our first snow of the season and shoveled our walks only to have them covered again by blowing drifts.

I guess the season of wet boots, soggy mittens, piled snow pants, and snowy hats littered around the door has officially begun. Though we bundled the kids and ourselves and tromped around the yard, making several snow angels and eating a few handfuls of powder, we didn't last out-of-doors for long. The wind was too blustery and the cold far too biting for any prolonged enjoyment of our first snow of the year. Instead we turned to the old indoor standby of the holiday season: cookie baking.

Our friend Mayumi was with us for a day before heading back to Japan for the winter break. She and the boys decorated Christmas trees, stars, bells, and candy cane cutouts.

The boys ate more frosting than they decorated with:

Our weather for the coming week looks like a prescription for more hunkering down:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
-1° F | -15° F -18° C | -26° C	2° F | -13° F -17° C | -25° C	9° F | 0° F -13° C | -18° C	11° F | 0° F -12° C | -18° C	11° F | -6° F -12° C | -21° C

With a high of -1 tomorrow, I think the boys and I will be doing all our Christmas baking in the next few days. And, hopefully, finding less sugary ways to beat cabin fever.

On another note altogether... some of you may know that I have a sort-of-secret love of football and am thus pleased to say that the Montana Grizzlies are headed to the National Championship (Division 1-AA) after a big win over JMU (for you few VA folk that might be reading this). Tim and the boys and I joined my cousins and our friend Elsa at a local restaurant to watch the game and found ourselves along with the entire population of diners and drinkers yelling and giving high-fives to everyone around. The only person not enjoying the win was Corin who thought the whole thing was "too loud" and in general doesn't like it when adults are acting atypical - which for us watching televised sports, much less yelling loudly in public places, certainly qualifies.

And on a final note, Seth has been donning his Santa hat and walking around crouched and growling, like a T-Rex. We couldn't figure out what he was doing until he started repeating: "Santa Claus" (growl) "Santa Claus" (growl). It was then we realized he had confused "Claus" and "claws" and was acting in accordance with how he thinks Santa Claws would act. Sort of makes for an interesting twist on the old guy, don't you think? Sounds like a scary movie trailer: Better watch out, better not cry, better not shout I'm telling you why. Santa Claws is coming to town.....rrrrr.....