Just before Christmas, we made another trip to Chicago with our friends, Rob and Pam Wagner. Pam had never seen the sights of the big city, so we took them. Who knew we'd be tour guides?? I can't get enough of this sky line. The actual name of this is the Cloud Gate.
Yep, it was cold. Colder than the last time.
Again, I'm surprised at how many people are out in the cold.
This time we walked all the way down to the "Water Tower". It's a shopping mall at the end of the Magnificent Mile. The Sports Museum is on the 7th floor.
This is the site looking down the elevator shaft in the center of the mall.
We had a wonderful Christmas.
We helped a lot with the Ward Christmas Party. If you look carefully, you can see the podium and piano at the rear of this room. This is actually the room where we hold Sacrament Meeting. It doubles as our Cultural Hall. REALLY a multi purpose room.
And it was FULL. We had about 65 people come. Lots of fun and food for our small branch.
We ate Christmas dinner with our neighbor, Stacey, and Brian. Lots of good food, again.
Here is Craig in his natural habitat - after working all day - after dinner - remote in hand - cat on lap - jammies on..
We were driving and saw herons!! I guess there is a preserve nearby. There were about 30 in this field. AND you will notice there was no snow. Snow in Murrieta, California, but no snow here. Ironic.
And then, just when we "thought" it was cold, the temperature plummeted. I woke up to this.
And here's what was predicted.
Yeah, our Branch President cancelled all the meetings for Wednesday and advised the missionaries to stay home. School was cancelled for Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday.
Craig is getting shoveling lessons from Stacey. Do you see that he doesn't have a coat on. That's because it was only 10 degrees. NOT -25 degrees. Yet.
And the Sister Missionaries showed up to help. Can't tell which is which.
And then it got REALLY, REALLY cold. Do you see the -24 chill factor??
We got out the big, winter coats. We have a chair where all the outside clothes get dumped. On the weather channel they were telling everyone that any exposed skin would get frostbite in 10 minutes!! I wore a sweater, a coat, gloves, neck scarf, ear muffs, waterproof and insulated boots, and a hat.
We try not to drive in the bad weather, but you can only stay home so much. This was driving home from Pat Sutton's house. We drove VERY slowly.
Sam, of course, won't go out. Then, miraculously, one day he did. Here are his little feet prints out the front door. Note that they go out, and come right back. LOL
And the bitter cold wrecks havoc on the cars. You can see that Craig is finally bundled up. It was so cold. First, our car wouldn't start. Then Stacey's car wouldn't start. And this morning, we finally bought a new battery. Our car wouldn't start again and we just didn't want to get stuck somewhere.
See Craig's tennis shoes?? His feet were so cold he had to get in a hot bath to warm them up. Silly boy.
One last picture of snow. This is the lake by Pat's house. Winter CAN be really beautiful. I'm constantly amazed that the sun can shine so brightly and the snow doesn't begin to melt. It's really good, crunchy snow. Not icy at all. I keep thinking what good skiing it would make - IF we had anything resembling a hill.
We're still finding ways to serve. We visited a man this morning who has some indoor projects that need doing. Craig will be busy for a couple of days helping him. And with school starting up after the holidays (and the snow), I'll be tutoring again. We're trying to stay busy right to the end.
