January Spring

This is definitely going down as the most gorgeous January ever... Everyone else is suffering through our cold weather for us, while we have been enjoying beautiful double-digit positive temperatures for weeks now! We've had 20s and 30s these past few days, and it's been so great to be able to take Little Bear out to play in the snow all the time. The only thing that could make this weather undesirable would be rain, but that hasn't put in an appearance since Friday morning... Hopefully it stays gone!

Between working from home Friday due to ice and staying home Monday to watch Little Bear while I recovered from several nights of insomnia, Matt had a nice long weekend, which Little Bear sure enjoyed: Daddy is so much more fun to play with than Mama! The two of them wrestled, played ball, and took walks outside over the weekend, and Little Bear was very disappointed indeed to realize Daddy was going to work this morning. It'll be a rude transition back for Matt as well; all OIT has regular work as well as a mandatory playing-nicely-with-others training today and Thursday, and Matt has to stay until 8 tonight monitoring two conferences for the state library system.

But at least the sun is up! Goodness, it's strange; not that long ago we had hardly any light at all, but we've been gaining a quarter of an hour of daylight every couple days for a while now and the difference is tremendous. And not only are the days longer, but the light hours are lighter, as the sun climbs higher in the sky each day: in the dead of winter, it only barely scrapes above the horizon. It's still not high enough that we have to worry about it melting snow, but it's moving the right direction. Just a couple weeks ago we were getting great sunrise photos after Mass on Sundays, and this past weekend the sun was already too high as we drove up the hill on our way to Mass.

With the warmth and light, it's hard to believe we are still only in January. Will it just stay warm all the way through to spring? The warm weather came so late last year--my brother threw his snowmachine in the back of his truck and went down to the mountains after he got home from college in May--maybe this is making up for it. I've never seen a year like this, and while it's sure nice to be reveling in the March weather already, there's an uncomfortable niggling in the back of my mind warning against growing too attached to the warmth... I've seen too many sudden February cold snaps to trust that we won't be plunged into weeks of -40 F to compensate for this loveliness.