Short Randomness

Today I went outside and got the van ready to go. Took me half an hour to scrape an 1/8 of an inch of ice off the windows. An 1/8 of an inch of ice doesn't seem like much until you think about how it gives you zero visibility, and it's wicked hard to scrape off that much ice (unless you have muscles like Rob, which I don't). It appears, therefore, to officially be winter.

This got me to thinking. Last year it didn't get that cold until January. It was a mild winter anyways. Our worst snow storm was a freak one in March. The year before that it was really warm through most of December, too. I remembered writing an e-mail update about how strangely warm it was, and a picture of Miciah wearing a skirt and flying a kite outside. So I'd like to re-post that e-mail along with a picture of today.

From the e-mail, dated Dec. 18, 2006:

Another one is of Miciah "flying a kite." She decided to make, completely unprompted, a kite. So she taped together a piece of paper and made a kite. She then asked for string. At this point I was still unaware of why she wanted the string, so I gave her the string that had fallen out of my sweatshirt (the one that you tighten to make the hood tight). So she tapes it to the kite and goes outside to fly it. It was so cute. I tried to take some good pictures, but she was moving too much, so this is the best one I have. Though I do have a little video of her running through the front yard trying to fly the kite. She then turns to me, on video, and says, "See, I TOLD you I needed a longer string." It was too cute.

Notice that she's outside flying a kite without a coat on on December 13th. The weather here has been incredible. 60 degrees and warmer. Which by now is getting annoying cause it's supposed to feel like winter so it can feel like Christmas. But it doesn't. It's like the first year we moved to California and couldn't quite get into Christmas the same way. Oh well. I suppose there's a week left.

And from today, Dec. 17, 2008:

I'm not complaining about the weather, though. At least not yet. That'll be February or March, when I'm so sick of it being cold. For now it's hot chocolate and warm soup comforting. With Christmas barely over a week away, this is how it's supposed to be.