This and that Thursday.

Our thermostat batteries died in the middle of the night and I woke up to a house so cold I could see my breath...eek, especially when there is a cold weather alert outside.

After changing the batteries the temp is slowly climbing, which made it nice and cool in here, perfect weather for a treadmill run since it is so cold outside.

Our baby girl left Afghanistan on schedule Monday morning and I'm pretty sure her friends there were sad to see her go. 

There was a delay however and she is currently stuck in Pakistan until next week.  She is said to be happy and well looked after and her hero Fred was sent this pic of her as proof...

...she's such a beautiful girl and we can't wait until she gets here!

Josh is happily settling into his second semester of 11th grade after a bit of a schedule change. 

We hiked both Saturday and Sunday last week and my niece Chey, who is a ton of fun, came along for the first time.  Tia, who I posted pix of in my last post is her dog.  She is an animal lover and here are a couple of pictures that show that and also her love of life and willingness to stray from the beaten path.

We were on a boardwalk that overlooks a marsh in warmer weather when Chey decided to go about 40 feet across the frozen marsh to this big pile of rocks.  We told her the branch she was sitting on was dead and that she was going to fall on the rocks below.  She did the typical.... "It will be fine..... " and then fell.  I didn't post the following pic on facebook (all the rest have been) but don't worry, she was fine, if a little embarassed.

Did I mention it's cold out?  We are all quite excited that by the weekend it's going to warm up to just about freezing on Saturday and by Sunday it may hit 5c! 

That's it for today... I have a million things to do and it's almost time to pick up the kids.  I'll be back soon but I hope everyone has a great day and an even better weekend!