Changing Views

This is the road I take our son to school on, photographed Saturday.

This is the same road in a photo taken last February.

One full week after two inches of rain melted about four feet of snow, the road still has ice on the edges from the melted snow plus rain. All that water also flooded our well pit and got into our basement, so the portable sump pump my husband bought during September's 9 inches of rain got used again.

In the 18 years we've lived here, we have never had water in the well pit, other than inside the water tank and pressure tank, before.


These before and after shots were taken on 27 December 2008 and 3 January 2009, a week apart. That's fog, not snow, in the December pictures. It hit 58 degrees F (14 C) the day I took these pictures.

My husband and our son are back to work and school for the first time since the last snow day on 19 December.

School was closed that Friday, and the kids missed their end-of-school party. But since they had no school and were starting two weeks of winter vacation, they couldn't be too sad.

I couldn't fit all of my pressies into this photo. My mom gave me a floor-lamp style Ott-lite, which is standing behind my knitting spot. Some of the chocolate has, um, disappeared. And the birds are thoroughly enjoying the birdseed.

The last photo sums up our New Year's eve. We get a new jigsaw puzzle and put it together over New Year's eve and New Year's day. Our son put together and played with his new Bionicle set, and we had party food and ridiculous drinks like this A&W rootbeer float, which is just as sweet as you might expect.

This year's puzzle was "Circle of Friends," by Jody Bergsma. Our son picked it out, and it scored high on my puzzle scale: not too easy, with fully interlocking pieces. It was tough enough that it took us three days to finish it off, but not so hard that we felt like giving up.

How was your New Year's?