Winter has arrived...

It has been a few weeks since I last blogged, but I have remained diligent collecting pictures.  For the most part we have been very busy and all of our free time seems to have vanished, but I will highlight what we have been doing and how it is going...

Darkness is the new normal...I have watched in amazement the days diminish seemingly quickly and now have hope that we are in the final stretch and it will only get lighter outside for longer after December 21.  Currently the sun is rising at 8:46AM and setting at 2:42PM.  In early November, this seemed depressing and made me very tired.  I read about the Vitamin D you get from the sun (deficiencies in this vitamin can make you very tired), and made a large effort to make sure I took advantage of as much daylight as possible, the kids have plenty of recess at school so they were getting lots of time in the daylight, but Sox and I make sure to take long morning walks after the kids get to school.  Also, we all started taking Vitamins making sure to get extra Vitamin D and I believe it has helped because I no longer feel as tired as I had been feeling in the afternoons after dark.  Finally, from what I have read, you should continue on in the evenings with plenty of scheduled activities and with all the sport practices in the evenings that I take the boys to, it does seem to keep us preoccupied and it makes the darkness less noticeable.

The sunset at 3:00...

In the fall, people warned me November was the coldest, darkest, most depressing month, they claim after that the snow lightens everything up.  I was prepared for it to be very dreary, but as I keep hearing, this November has been a mild one with very little rain and mild temperatures...(I keep saying the Duffauts brought the weather, but maybe it is global warming...)  I found November to be pleasant and I think that we are all adjusting to our new climate well.  It has hovered around 32 degrees and on "warm" days it even hits 40, which is actually not too cold if you have the proper clothes on.

I heard sometimes there was a snowfall in October, so when we got to almost the end of November with no snow, Ben started complaining...Finally we had about an inch a couple of weeks ago...Ben was in heaven! Alex too!

Just enough to make a few snowballs...

Last Thursday I got a friendly text in the morning from a friend who let me know I should be careful in the evening if I planned to take Alex half an hour away to basketball because there was going to be a lot of snow starting in the afternoon.  About 1:00, it started and lasted until Friday and started off this winter with about 6 inches or so of snow.  They say that is more at one time than usual because the Baltic Sea just half hour east of here isn't frozen yet so the moisture was picked up from there.  Once again the boys and Sox were in heaven!  All of their time at recess is now spent in the snow, and even when they get home, you can not get them inside.  The temperature is still around 30 so again it seems pretty mild compared to what it will drop to.

After 2 hours of snowing a lot accumulated!

Playing in the snow and "shoveling"...we do have snow removal in our rental agreement, but Ben wanted to get a head start...

Don't let him fool you, that fort has a hidden stash of snowballs ready for action!

Of course the best part is the hot cocoa after:)