Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all of you from all of us at Gunflint!

Bruce and I had a great trip out east to celebrate Christmas. One of the many highlights was a trip into New York to see the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Show. We were looking forward to it all along but we never realized how wonderful the show is. If you are ever in New York at the correct time, don’t hesitate to see this show. Lunch and dinner in the city completed a great day.

We returned home on the 30th. Two weeks worth of mail was stacked up. It was just fun to sit down and read all our Christmas cards at one time. We sure have an active bunch of friends.

All the January catalogs were also sitting there. They included about a dozen flower and garden catalogs. As you can see from this picture, my garden is not ready to accept plants yet. So I will spend the next few months planning and dreaming about what goes into the garden.



This morning I spent time writing thank you notes for Christmas presents. My mother instilled that habit into me many years ago. I, in turn, made sure the boys wrote their thank you’s. They had to have them done before school started again in January.

Bruce and I are also into another traditional activity for this time of year – trying to get rid of the excess weight we put on over the holidays. It's almost like someone pastes the pounds on us at night. Getting on the scale our first morning home was not pretty. In fact there was a lot of moaning and groaning. We are back into the low fat, small portion meals. It is not nearly as good as holiday food but what can you do?

The lake is covered with solid ice. Neighbors tell me that it has been groaning quite a bit. You don’t normally think of a frozen lake as groaning or making any noise but it really does. The actually size of the ice changes as the temperature goes up and down. Lower temperatures result in more ice. The ice cracks and creates ridges. In fact, when it cracks you hear a loud boom. When the temperatures rise, the ice shrinks in size.

Today as I walked down from the mailbox I could see a twisted line where the ice had cracked and let water up. This area was bare ice while everything around it was covered with a layer of snow. It will, in turn, be covered with snow when we get our next storm.

We have about 15-20 inches snow. Tucker loves to roll in the snow every time he goes out. The guests are enjoying playing in the woods too. All the trails are groomed for cross country skiers. The sled dogs are taking people through the forest. A few snowmobiles have been passing by on the lake.

Today is a perfect day to be out. It was just below zero in the morning but warmed up to over 10 degrees by lunch time. The sun is shining and the snow is glistening. With the clear skies, maybe we will see northern lights tonight.

No comments: