Winter?

It has been a crazy "winter" here!  We had snow for Halloween and snow for Thanksgiving and then barely eeked out a few inches just in time for a white Christmas.  Much of December was quite warm.  In fact, towards the beginning of December we took the kids canoeing- yes, canoeing in December!  Actually it was a really wonderful morning canoeing in an amazing place that Joe found where we saw about 7 seven beaver lodges, a couple of sea otters swimming (from a distance) and even found wild cranberries!  We all tasted some of the raw, wild cranberries and they were incredibly tart.  Joe, Lily and I ended up spitting ours out, but not Eli...he kept popping one after the other in his mouth! 

And these pictures were taken just a day or two after our canoeing trip...yes, it was December and the kids were splashing in puddles in the back yard- crazy!  It seemed sort of novel at the time, but now the lack of snow is really getting to me.  Because it has gotten cold and cold without snow is just sad.  We have just the slightest bit of white covering the ground right now, but not really even enough to make a poor little snowman.  That's right, no snowmen, snow forts, skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, or snowmobiling (with Joe's dad's snowmobiles) like we had been looking forward to this winter.  The cold with lack of snow has made for incredible ice skating, but that's it.  Please, please, please let it snow!