I took a few days to visit my folks in Albuquerque last week and to enjoy some slightly warmer weather. While I was hoping for something in the 60's, it was more like in the 40's. Still a little better than what Wisconsin was having, but not a lot better. We had a great time putting up their Christmas tree and enjoying some excellent Mexican food - more restaurants around the country should be serving sopaipillas! I lucked out with good travel connections on both legs which is always a bit of a miracle this time of year.
Over last weekend, we had our first real snowfall, 8-9 inches. Now I live in Wisconsin and snow in the winter is just part of the bargain, but the first snowfall should be more like a half an inch. We should certainly get a training snow to ease into the winter shoveling season. Get our muscles trained up, remember the best way and direction to be shoveling the snow, and make sure all the equipment is working. We should not be hammered with a major dumping right out the gate.
Saturday night we took in the Foreigner at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater with our friends, Greg and Rhonda. This is by far our favorite play ever since we first saw it in CT with Sheri and Bruno. We are almost always in tears in the middle of the second act from laughing so hard. Afterwards, we enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Lake Park Bistro as the snow slowly tumbled down.
Sunday morning it was up to shovel the afore mentioned snow before heading up to Green Bay to watch our Packers demolish the Seattle Seahawks. This was a work event for Jo as we were joined by some of the west coast sales representatives for Northwestern Mutual. We had a lot of fun cheering on the home and, of course, it helped that Green Bay won the game.
Temperatures for the week look to remind us of what can happen in Wisconsin in the winter as the high tomorrow is supposed to stay in the single digits - the low single digits.
Winter is certainly making a dramatic statement this year, so far. After getting 8 inches of snow last weekend, the temperatures plummeted for the week to end the week in another large snowfall - probably around 9 inches. We spent Friday and Saturday repeatedly shoveling out the driveway and sidewalk trying to stay ahead of the white stuff. We are only in December and we are already running out of places to put the snow. We are hoping for some warmer temperatures just to compress the snow banks a little so we have a place to put any new snow. You certainly don't usually have to worry about having a white Christmas in Wisconsin.
We did manage to get out and enjoy some the reason to have all this snow. Saturday, after shoveling out the driveway, we got out our cross country skis and headed to Lake Park for an hour of skiing through fluffy white powder. We were the first to make tracks which is always fun and the sun poked out of the clouds for the majority of the time we were out. We spent the afternoon doing some cooking for our brunch on Sunday and making a couple of batches of Christmas cookies. Later that evening we tramped on out to tackle another round of snow clearing as the snow started really coming down again starting around 4:00 PM.
Sunday we had our now annual Christmas brunch with our nieces, nephews, and Kathy and John. The weather cooperated in that the snow finally had stopped, but the temperatures were in the low single digits, so gathering by the fire for our white elephant gift swap was certainly welcome. All the dishes worked out and we managed to have everything done at the same time without significantly undercooking or overcooking any of them. Since a couple of the dishes were experimental, we were relieved it all worked. It was great catching up with everyone and to find out their holiday plans plus everyone got to go home with an exciting white elephant gift. Later, the Packers were on and as the Packers are almost a religion in Wisconsin, we just had to watch and enjoy the game.
