The Big Freeze

Today it is a beautiful, sunny day and yet the children and I are sheltering inside.... The temperature is 4F, -7F with windchill and it is just too cold to venture outside! The extremes of weather here are incredible - I remember writing a blog over the summer when we couldn't go out because of the heat! E is convinced that he will lose body parts due to frost bite if he ventures out which is maybe a little over-dramatic but it is flipping freezing!! I have to say that the weather isn't quite as I'd expected. The snow is beautiful but once the snow ploughs have done their business we are left with cleared roads and walls of snow on the edge of the pavement. It hasn't actually snowed for a few nights but the temperature never rises enough to melt it so it just builds up the more it snows. We are fortunate to have a garage so we don't have to dig out the car in the mornings but the snow in the alleyway behind the house is getting so deep it's not going to do the car's suspension much good.... this is just one of the many reasons why you need a 4x4 here....!

The children have layers upon layers of outerwear - padded trousers, jackets, gloves, hats, neck warmers - yet yesterday i was getting complaints about their eyes being cold!! I do sympathise, though ... I am waiting for a time unencumbered by small children when I can go and buy some fleece lined trousers as my legs are getting chapped!! We braved the conditions to buy Christmas food supplies yesterday (you should see the size of the turkey in our fridge) and just in the time it took to cross the supermarket car park and get in the car my finger tips were throbbing even through the thick gloves I was wearing. We are forecast heavy snow showers on Tuesday night so I will need to go out for supplies later on this evening once D is home from work. Annoyingly it is not currently forecast to snow on Christmas Day, thought there will be snow on the ground - but does that actually count as a White Christmas?