And the winner is......................

Squirrel number one has joined the Rodent Relocation project! We have been battling the squirrels this past week as the snow has piled up. They have gotten very ingenious about finding ways into our bird feeders and we were spending way too much time chasing them out. Finally this morning we got out the trap and didn't have to wait long before the first curious guy volunteered to go for a ride! Actually it was his buddies that trapped him! He was running around inside and the trap hadn't sprung yet. His two friends hopped onto the trap and their weight brought the door down. Yea for teamwork! Stay tuned as the game continues.....

Six times one, oh wait......two, oops, make that three....

One of the beautiful things about summer is not needing footwear, or at least only needing minimal footwear. Our back entry way is beginning to look like a shoe store that was hit by a tornado! We have six people here now that Ethan is back from college so that's six pairs of shoes. Two days ago we also had a couple extras here and they went sledding, so that added six pairs of boots strewn about. While those were still all out a couple people went out for the evening and in the morning I came down to find a couple additional pairs of shoes had been added to the mix. Let's see.....that comes to about 14 pairs of boots/shoes! Now, let's add up the coats, snow pants, gloves, hats, etc...that are in various stages of drying in the entry way and the bathroom and you've got............A HUGE MESS! One of my favorite times of the year is the day I wash and pack away all the winter stuff. I don't think that will be anytime soon :-(

I found the paper!

We awoke to about 8" of new, beautiful snow this morning. I was up at 5am when the phone rang and the automated school recording stated that there was no school. Hmmm................it might have been nice to just get up at my normal time and turn on the tv and find that out instead of being jarred awake by the phone. Just a thought!

Josh got up for work and I went out to help clean off his car. While I was out there I figured I would look for our paper which is normally thrown on our driveway. Didn't see any sign of the bright orange wrapper. Checked the paper's website when I came in and it said the carriers were running late. A couple hours later Ken went out to snowblow off the driveway and after two passes I saw him stop to clean something out of the snowblower. Yup! You guessed it! Our paper :) Thankfully it was rolled so tightly that it was still readable and thankfully it didn't damage the snowblower! Ken finished our driveway, went next door and did his dad's and now is going to Beloit to clear our two rental properties. Hopefully this will be it for a few days!

What a difference a week makes.............

We went from relatively decent temps for this time of year and no snow last Sunday to three snow days this week that have dumped about 6" of snow here. I woke to -5 this morning that even went to -7 before beginning the SLOW climb back up. Hmmmm, if it isn't even technically winter yet, what might be in store for our area when we are in the middle of winter? I recall Farmer's Almanac predicting over 100" of snow for some parts of our region this winter, and maybe even as much as 150"! Where is that Global Warming taking place?!

I thought I would post a couple pictures of Alex shoveling snow on our back deck. I wanted to grill out on Friday night and couldn't even get the door opened! I guess it will be quite some time until the pool is used again :-( This wouldn't be a problem if we lived in Hawaii.........................

Ethan's turn to jump!

Proof that Josh did go skydiving!

No Shave November......Before..............................and after!

No, not me! Josh decided that for the month of November he wasn't going to shave. By Nov. 28 he was counting down to Dec. 1 so he could trim and shave off some of the beard. He said it was getting really itchy. I kind of thought he would take more off, but I guess as time goes on he can modify it if he wants to. I thought I would share the "before" and "after" pictures!