winter, the end?

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Friday morning we woke up to 4 inches of snow and our fifth snow storm. For Wisconsin this has been an amazingly easy Winter. Certainly not the Winter of my childhood with truly brutal snow and cold. And while it has been a gentle kind of Winter I am pretty much done. February is always the longest month of the year for me. I hold hope for March. That is the month where we can get those first teasing days of Spring. And I am ready.

ice quake

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I had no idea what an ice quake was until I moved here. I wrote about it once before. Usually they happen during the night because of the temperature changes. But Friday about lunch time we heard a LOUD noise like something big falling, or the front door slamming really, really hard. The house shook. Then we looked out at the shoreline and saw the big, long, jagged cracks in the ice. I was surprised that the cracks were so jagged. Others I have seen were long and straight. Very interesting weather.

happy thanksgiving

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gratitude and giving thanks, who does not like a holiday devoted to this? Thanksgiving is SO much better than Christmas. Christmas has such high expectations with all the gift giving and parties and obligations. And the disappointment, not seeing everyone, not going everywhere, what to wear, someone feeling slighted etc.

Thanksgiving seems to have less rules. You come together with friends or family to give thanks and have a fine meal. It does not get better than that.

And no matter what is going on in each of our lives it is always good to practice gratitude. I have a very long list of things I am thankful for... just a few are

1. my wonderful family, especially my sweet husband John and that new grandbaby Jackson 2. my equally wonderful friends, also too many to mention 3. every sunrise I get to see 4. that I have enough food to eat, a warm house, a soft bed, our health 5. I get to live in this wonderful city in this great country

I could go on and on but do tell me today what are you grateful for?

mother nature is not happy...

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or maybe she is.

Woke up to another 12 inches of snow on top of yesterdays 6. I think they have declared a state of emergency and the national guard has been called out. Oddly (stupidly?) the new governor is making all state employees come in today even though the offices are closed to the public. Someone in our neighborhood headed out walking towards downtown this morning since we were not plowed out and the buses aren't running. Our tiny street might not get plowed until midnight.

And somebody ran out of gas blocking our driveway last night. Thankfully he is now gone so our plowing service can get in our driveway when they get here.

We have food and a full tank of gas in the little 4 wheel drive and we are snug inside. Of course we will later go out and drive around and look at things. My little Winter car drives through absolutely anything and everything.