All things winter

Winter in the great white north can be brutal, but it can be quite beautiful as well. Hyphen Girl and Trihubby created a winter photo montage yesterday. The snowflakes were very cooperative, each one showing their distinct personality-kind of like the tribe. We thought this one looked like two swans-and note the little snowflake?
Six or so inches of fluffy white blanketed the homefront-yea a white Christmas. As I've contended here before, if you have to have cold, you might as well have snow to enjoy it. Recess duty for me today and the old axiom, sometimes it is better to beg forgiveness than to seek permission was well appreciated. The kids have an 8 foot slope at the edge of their playground domain which takes about 2 seconds to descend. A short trek through the woods lies an 80 foot, mogul studded sledding paradise, which coincidentally lies outside of the normal playground boundary. When queried about using the hill there was no one to ask, and the kid in me took over, heck yeah. Suddenly 45 kids were running pell mell through the woods and great delight and laughter ensued as they spent recess throwing themselves down the hill on plastic sleds or simply on their backs. Round two is second and third grade and once the announcement was made, melee followed to "the hill". As I jogged alongside, one little girl with complete trepidation asked me, "are you sure we can go to "the hill"? Did you ask the principal or something?" Better to beg forgiveness....I'm in charge and we're going to "the hill". One bloody nose and two bumped heads later, but I bet they had a better afternoon having fully exhausted themselves over recess. I'm a big advocate of fun exercise, and what is more fun than plunging down a hill in the snow-beats standing and shivering by the door. Oh, it was 3 fred (thanks Bolder) with 4 below wind chill. If you're going to have cold...
The basement is complete, which also means my new training area is ready, complete with Christmas Tree. I can spin and look out of the windows, or watch the television. I've decided to work through The Lord of the Rings trilogy-works well because each disk is about 1:40-I just tack on 20 of normal tv and I've got a good two hour spin. Not sure what I'm going to do when I have to bump it to three hours.
The tree is complete, yea for us. We were a white light family for a few years, so this year thought we should shake things up with blue and white lights. Perhaps I should have stayed with the white lights, for some reason the three strings of light ended up on the tree fully segregated-blue on top, white in the middle and blue on the bottom- an oreo cookie tree-somewhat dressed for Chanukah-and of course the kids love it- so it stays.

2 hour bike to Monday Night Football tonight, swim 2800 yards tomorrow.