Housewife, 54

The corner has been turned!  Looking at the calendar, I knew in my mind that the days would be getting longer after the winter solstice, but today I have EVIDENCE!  You see, we have a lamp attached to a timer in our living room, set to come on just at dusk and to turn off around 11pm.  Today is the first day that the light has come on and IT IS STILL DAYLIGHT!                                                     See!  Light on.... daylight still glowing through window! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.... even though there is snow on the ground and I almost froze as I was shopping this morning.                                                        I think I will go catalog shopping for garden seeds!

A couple of months ago, my son called to ask if we would come out to babysit Grandson so he and Daughter-in-law could go on a winter vacation with friends.  Now you must understand that I do NOT like to travel in winter weather, in fact I am a terrible weenie if it is snowing or icy.  ESPECIALLY when traveling such a long distance (it is 9 hours across open prairie).  However, I love my son, and who wouldn't treasure a whole week with a little drop of sunshine like my Grandson, so I said yes! All fall and through December, the weather has been unnaturally fair and warm, but I would have bet big $$ that it would get nasty when we had to travel, and it did!  We made it across 2/3 of Iowa and just close to sundown, the temperature dropped, the rain turned to snow, and the roads started getting tricky. So we pulled off for the night (good thing) and continued the next morning, when all was cleared off.  We knew we were in South Dakota when the pavement turned to pink! (Rose quartz i