The Deep Freeze

Lauren and I watched 'An Inconvenient Truth' a couple of weeks ago, in large part as a need to educate ourselves as to the threat of global warming. It just seems wrong to be living in VT and have 65 degree temperatures at Christmas with no snow on the ground. Our New Year's resolution has been to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The great news is that we seem to have completely repaired the issue simply by educating ourselves a bit. Pretty much since the day we watched the film, the temperature has dropped, and we've gotten a bunch of snow. As I looked outside this morning, we saw -6 degrees. Beautiful! Guess you need to be careful what you wish for!

Jokes aside, it has been nice to see winter finally arrive, and we've been having a blast getting the kids outside and teaching them to ski. We are both amazed at how quickly they are picking it up, and moreover, how much they love it! I was holding off on writing about our visits to Smuggler's Notch until I had some pictures to share, too, but it is a little tough to ski backwards, manage two kids and think about snapping pictures. Our last day on the hill ended with both Ally and Ty pretty much going top to bottom without any parent help. Incredible. Their "wedges" are coming along great, and both kids are now making turns. They are pretty much at the level I'd expected for the end of the season, which is fantastic, although I think Lauren and I are going to need some additional teaching hints, as I think we've got a pretty big gap in teaching ideas for the space between edgie wedgies and bump runs. We'll figure it out together, though.

The coolest part is seeing the kids embrace something which is something we love as well. Seeing them learn anything is amazing, but for them to match interest levels on something that brings so much fun for us too is awesome.

Look for some pictures soon, and please also take a minute to check out some of these links:

http://www.first100.org/
http://www.keepwintercool.org/

This isn't really a Democrat or a Republican issue -- it's an all of us issue. Hope you'll think about what you can do to help.

Russian (dog) Roulette

Just a quick thought from my morning today... Aiko wakes me up around 6am ready to go outside. No big deal, but a little earlier than I'd like. Now, for most of her life, Aiko has lived in fairly populated areas (like Boston) where I had to go with her, or in recent years, at least put her out on a her dog run. Since we now live in the great north woods of VT and can't even see our neighbors (much less a road with any significant traffic), she can now go outside freely. This of course gives her access to neighborhood barbeques and (even better) the trash which results from such events, but in the winter, it's not much of an issue.

So out she goes at 6am on arguably the coldest day of the year. I expect her to return in minutes, given that the temperature is in single digits, but she's gone for quite awhile. Finally she returns, which brings up the reference to russian roulette. We've now lived in this house for three plus years, and without fail, Aiko has come back to whichever door you let her out of (there are several ways outside). For some reason, though, for the past few months, she has instituted a new game of 'guess which door' she'll return to. I'm thinking about pitching it as a game show to NBC.

So, here I am in my PJs, listening to Aiko's barks to come in, wandering from door to door trying to guess which door she's been barking at. And, on the other end, there is my dog, outside in the cold, getting frustrated at my poor guessing and changing to a different door. In my mind, it probably looked like one of those old Scooby Doo cartoons where Scooby and Shaggy start opening closet doors while trying to outrun the monster. We finally hooked up after a half-dozen attempts and Aiko comes in from the cold. We gave each other that look that only a couple who has put up with each other for far too long can give, and headed back to bed for a few final zzzzs.