Thursday......

For as warm as we were for a couple of days, we still have a lot of snow.  Now that it is severely cold again with strong wind chills, the snow is very hard frozen on the surface. I don't like walking on it as it is very slick and icy.   Barney is enjoying being outside more as the days are longer but the cold does eventually bring him back inside again.

The sun shines in to warm the dining room a little. I can sit at the laptop and see this as I blog and also look outside.  The birds are scarce this morning.  I didn't feed them for a couple of days and they have vanished.  I expect they found all the other feeders in town and won't come back for a while. 

I put out some really good stuff this morning for them to eat and I haven't even had a sparrow come in to eat.  Maybe it is too early in the morning and the cold is too much for them.  It was 0.8 this morning when I got up.  We are to warm up to 15 degrees F.  today and cool down to 13 F. tonight.  It gets colder tomorrow.

One member of my family, distant cousin, set up a family facebook page that has me now involved with more photo searching.  I did get my mom's photo album scanned but I really have not had time to edit anything. The sheet of pictures here shows the first born child, my oldest brother, being photographed so many times. The house in the background on the right is a part of a story as to why my parents met and married.

The family facebook page has been great as I am being able to see and take old photos of the family that I had not ever seen. Some photos were taken way before I was born.  Seeing a photo of my grandparents on my dad's side standing on the beach at the Pacific ocean is one I never expected to see.  I will share later and tell the story.

I am also getting to see pictures of my brothers and parents before I was born that I too didn't know existed.  My brothers took big piles of photos from my mom while I was in college. I have a first cousin 20 years older than me that is letting the rest of us see what she has in her boxes.  We were strung out in ages so much that the first cousin always seemed to be more like an aunt to me than a cousin. I like seeing her shared images of the 30' and 40's.

I am home today and hope to be for the rest of the week.  Things do get piled up that need to be done when I go to school.  I like to catch up all in one day so the next day won't require so much pressure. Work will be done.  We will see what happens today.  With it being so cold I don't think we will venture out today except to go get the mail.

I know everyone is being effected by this cold in most of my friends' blogland.  I hope all can stay safe and warm.  Thanks for checking in today.