Oh the weather outside is frightful...

...and the fire would be so delightful...if we had a fireplace. But we don't. We do have candles and they are lovely. And we now have a decorated tree. It was headed back into the garage to be stored for another year, but the holiday spirit grabbed hold of J yesterday while we were riding out the cold snap and all the sudden out came the ornaments and the lights....voila! Our tree is lit and sparkly! And I got new ornaments yesterday from a nearby friend whom I met online. How cute are these peacocks? They are hand-painted glass with real peacock feathers...here's how they look on our tree as well as some of our other, new ornaments:

Handpainted Glass Peacocks from Jaime (Hawaiian Honey)

Handpainted Glass Hawaiian Snowman from Yvonne (MrsBabySalute)

It's warmed up today...to freezing! I went to work today, later than normal so I didn't have to brave the frozen streets in the dark. The office was half full and actually the further south I drove towards the office, the more ice and snow there was. So weird! I live 50 blocks from the office. In our neighborhood, no snow on the ground, minimal ice on the car, etc. At work? Snow on the roofs and sidewalks, icy roads and parking lots! I nearly had to skate from my car to the front door! Tomorrow I'll be sure to wear flats. It's supposed to continue to warm up, into the low 40's. That's 20 degrees higher than yesterday. Area schools were closed again today and are supposedly closed tomorrow too. But the office will be open. And we're supposed to warm into the 60's until Saturday, when it's predicted to drop back into the 20-30's. Bizarre.

On a non-weather note (how many of my posts are about the OK weather? Or gas? Which went up ten cents to $1.49 over the weekend. Bah!)...we're going to see the Nutcracker on Thursday night. We had a coupon for buy-one-get-one-free so we did! I am excited...I have never seen this ballet live. I have seen it on television and of course, heard the music a million times. But altogether, dancing and music, live...this will be the first.

Oh and today is my mom's birthday. Happy birthday mommy! I miss you.