Thawing Out

Well, I can assure you if I ever entertained the slightest desire to live in Alaska....its gone! We got home Sunday night to temperatures well below zero. When we're gone we keep our thermostat set on 50 so the pipes and my plants won't freeze. Normally its 50 when we get home but the heaters just couldn't keep up. The house was only 37 degrees inside! Brrr.... And the girls, poor babies, nearly froze when I took them out. They were so cold from just a few minutes that Paris's feet turned blue, and Carlie came inside and literally held her foot in the air while sitting in front of the fire. It was cute...in a very sad kind of way. Here are the girls thawing out in front of the fire. They don't look very pleased do they?

Speaking of thawing out, we left last night and are in Salt Lake City, enjoying the heat wave. Its 32 degrees. What a relief! Yesterday at home I couldn't tell what the temperature was. The red in the thermometer stayed down in the bulb. It never registered anything. All I know is it was below -10, because thats the last number on the thermometer. Things in the house warmed up, but everything in the truck froze solid, even the windex and the carpet cleaner. I stayed indoors toasty warm, but Malcolm and Brandon ran a few trucking errands together and said, when they returned home, that there were trucks broke down all over from their fuel gelling up. Maybe some of you don't know, but if it gets cold enough, diesel fuel will start to freeze, or kind of turn thick like jelly. We keep "anti-gell" in our fuel to help, but you also have to keep the fuel level up. If your fuel gets too low, it is more likely to freeze. I passed a truck last night on the back roads of Montana that had gelled up. He was parked in the other lane with a wrecker. But that was a high bill!
But we did fine, and for now are able to breath without our lungs burning from the cold. And the girls just went out to potty and managed to stay long enough to get their stuff done. (I cleaned up a lot of messes yesteray because they just couldn't bear to stay out long enough to finish. I was forgiving considering the circumstances.)
The girls played hard all day, as they always do when we're home. When Malcolm and Brandon got back to the house we had a late lunch together and the girls settled in for a nap.

Oh...update!!! Check out the ears!

Of course this is right after taking the tape off. She's been free almost two days now and the one ear fell. I've got to tape her up again this morning.
This scares me to death!

Ella discovered this little landing on the stairs and its her personal observation deck, she thinks. She slips through the railing and goes to the very edge and watches us below. She makes me very nervous doing it, but I don't know how to make her stop, short of running chicken wire or something along the railing to block her out. (like I'm going to do that) Hopefully she'll never take one more step, or better yet, get bored with doing it.

Remember this, my naked tree?

Well I was standing in the kitchen yesterday morning looking at it, and an email Malcolm's aunt Sharon sent me suddenly came in mind. In it she had commented on our pretty tree, and mentioned that table clothes made pretty tree skirts. And then....I had one of those moments of brilliant inspiration. Remember me mentioning my Chrismas table cloth that the mice had chewed holes in? Well I'd tossed it into a garbage bag in disgust and dissappointment, but I hadn't thrown out that bag yet. So I ran downstairs and dug it back out, tossed it in the wash to clean the mousy off of it, and layed it out to examine it. There was one big hole, the size of a small apple, and several tiny pin holes. So I cut on a radial line through the biggest hole to the center, and voila....instant tree skirt! Thank you Sharon! Now I have a tree skirt, and I still have my table cloth too. I was sad about loosing it.
And I even managed to get a few gifts under my tree too! It looks much more festive now!