Unlike the lower 48, it is way too warm here. We are approaching week 2 of higher than 32 degree temperatures along with a few days of precipitation sprinkled in. We're losing all of our snow, the roads are glazed doughnuts early in the morning, and the cross country trails are worthless. It's just odd and annoying. The winter is nowhere near over, so let's please just plow straight on through and enjoy the sledding hills and ski trails without any melting detours.

The reprieve of cold and snow means the grounds crew at the townhouse stopped by to blade the icy lot and truck away the snow mounds occupying the remote corners. Henry did not know what was going on, but he knows all too well the grumble of trucks and beeping of transmissions in reverse, so he quickly alerted Mommy that they needed to gear up and head outside. I'm told he silently devoured the spectacle of the front end loader biting off hunks of rock like snow and dropping it into the dump truck. Sometimes all your dreams of trucks and heavy machinery realize themselves right in your backyard.

Twenty minutes later in the warmth of the living room Becky wisely produced some cotton balls and Henry was soon off to the races moving the snow into his dump trucks.




Our hike to the bog yesterday was a comfortable one at 40 degrees. Henry found a small pocket of sticks under a downed tree that he quickly dubbed a "secret cave." Perhaps those Encyclopedia Brown books are sinking in.

He also loved examining the sewer cap, but I advised him to not get too close, lest the CHUDS get him.



In the end the best part of the hike was completely unexpected and unplanned, and occupied 20 minutes of our time -- walking all over crunchy ice.