Last day of Christmas break

Oh why must our lovely Christmas break end? We've had three weeks off from many regular commitments and hubby had quite a few days off from work. We've been able to visit Mom without it being crammed into an already busy schedule. We saw Star Wars as a family at the movies, A Christmas Carol at the theater, went to Animal Adventures, attended the play Tristan was in, 101 Dalmatians, had several nice meals and a couple feasts and enjoyed some downtime.

We got fiber optic internet installed, what a great thing that is, so much faster than DSL! A worker from Texas installed it since our local company figured once everyone is hooked up in this little area there will not be enough work to keep local people employed so they might as well contract it out. It was a banner day at our house when the big Texan, who was extremely scared of our dogs, installed the new equipment. No more asking who is using all the internet or can I reset the box (modem). The slow internet times family of 6 was the cause of a few family squabbles and I don't just mean the kids!

Tomorrow regular weeks start again and we add in the kids snowboard lessons. I got out my skis today, haven't gone yet due to late snow and the fact that I'm not working at the ski area (strangely I miss it, but we do need to keep me relatively ready to go at a moment's notice until we get mom more settled at the nursing home). I will ski later this week when the kids snowboard. At first I found only one ski pole, thankfully I found my second one, didn't want to be a one pole skier! Especially in iffy conditions with the lack of much natural snow so far this year.

I wandered around outdoors a bit today and missed my vegetable gardens and apple trees, now that everything is covered with a coating of snow there will be no more gardening until spring. It was an extended season this year, that's for sure. I am hoping for a short winter too and an early spring. It could happen, never expected to get no snow until after Christmas, we do get lucky years when it comes to winter...once in awhile.

Probably should take down this little greenhouse now the snow has come.

These little solar dancing animals lived in the greenhouse. They will still dance, does that mean we would get some use out of solar even in the winter?

The snow has come.

Isn't this a silly bird feeder? I couldn't help myself and bought it.

The nice box which brought our internet into the current technology, Yay fiber optics!

My skis...and poles are ready.