ice frogs

remember that time i posted about how crazy the fireworks were, and then the next night they were even crazier?  well, what was i saying yesterday about the weather?

whatever it was like yesterday, i might as well have been talking about some tropical island.  yesterday wasn't cold.  today was cold.  (though i just watched a clip about siberia.  now that is cold!)

negative seventeen celsius, which only sounds slightly better when told in fahrenheit... just over a degree.  a single degree above zero.  as i wrote to someone in an email today, it felt like stepping into a walk-in freezer going outside this morning.  my mittens had frost on them halfway into the trip to the guys' school, or at least that's when i noticed it.  greg said he had frost on his nose on the way to work.  and the spiderwebs hanging from our carport definitely did.

generally, a frost, disguised as fog, hung in the air all day long.  it dawned on me at some point that this fog must be ice fog.  something i'd never seen before but only heard about in a book entitled 'going to extremes' (of all things)... a book about alaska, not temperate denmark.

the fog (also known as 'ice crystals suspended in air') before leaving the house this morning...

the fog when picking up the guys this afternoon... 

but given this lingering fog, you can rightly imagine there was not much wind, which is maybe why it felt like walking into a freezer.  and when you have all your proper winter gear on, it's not actually so bad.  it's the wind and flimsy jackets, no hats, and tennis shoes that make all the difference.  and all you (northern) midwesterners know this already.  this is your kind of winter weather after all (minus the ice fog), which can probably be blamed on the fact that we are living on a (not tropical) island.  william's class had a sledding day today.

so now let's quickly move beyond the weather before i call it a night.  it's so hard to get a clear photo of henry because he moves too quickly, but here's one where i caught him this morning at breakfast, actually posing for the camera in his moose pajamas...

and tonight before dinner, two guys playing together on the largest train tracks this house has seen in a long time, i imagine...

now it's time for a warm bed!  goodnight!