Frozen Dirt

The other day I went out to go to work and found this:


A half inch of ice completely encasing my way to and from work. It took about a half hour to get through, and the experience made me fondly remember the winters in Utah with light, fluffy, dry snow. I remember clearing the windshield by just turning on the wipers! Wow! If I'd tried that, we'd and already be on the third new pair in a month! Anyway we made it through and to work with the help of the 4wd.

But for all the trouble it causes (breaking tree-limbs, pulling down power lines, turning the roads into skating-rinks, and making raccooncicles) it is pretty, here are a few pics:


If you kick the branches they shatter, which is also pretty sweet.

Also, we put up our tree (not frozen), and here's how it looks:



With presents and everything! I must say, we did pretty good for our first tree, and it's a new experience for me to have a real one instead of fake, but the pregnant wife insisted, and what she wants-she gets. However, I'm not sure what to do with it when we're done... The only thing I've ever done with a real tree is take it out west of the lake and burn it... I'll have to do some looking.

In other news, the other night we had some friends over and made graham-cracker-candy-houses and they turned out pretty good! Tiff and I made a brown igloo.



We only realized afterward that igloos are white so we could've just covered it in frosting, but sometimes we're a little slow. Notice the polar bear? Nice, huh? Everyone else's turned out pretty cool too:


Also, today it was 0 degrees outside and felt like -23. We stayed inside with the windows and blinds shut. Church was cancelled due to too much ice in the chapel parking lot. The one time we did open the door, the icy air came sweeping in our house and it looked like we were opening the freezer, so we shut it. Merry Christmas!!!