Frosted Windowpanes

Have you ever heard of the Christmas Waltz? I always thought frosted windowpanes meant either condensation on your windows, or the fake stuff you spray out of a can. I learned today what they actually mean by it, although it's more like iced windows here. When we woke up, it was 21 degrees and raining. How is that possible? It's called freezing rain, and this is the first time anyone in our family has experienced it. Here is the definition from Wikipedia. Freezing rain is a type of precipitation that begins as snow at a higher altitude, falling from a cloud towards earth, melts completely on its way down while passing through a layer of air above freezing temperature, and then encounters a layer below freezing at lower level to become supercooled. This water will then freeze upon impact of any object it then encounters. The ice can accumulate to a thickness of several centimeters.

Wow, are they right. Shortly after it hit our windows, it froze into a sheet of ice. We can't see out of them because they are completely iced over. There was a Primary activity this morning, but they cancelled it because it is too dangerous to drive. Christian and Ethan went out to the garage wearing Yak Trax, and it's a good thing they did because the entire ground has a thin layer of ice underneath the snow that is now falling (it's actually part snow, part ice. Yikes!) By the way, the chain surrounding our window is a chain that Grandma Ruth helped Ethan make, and the kids break one link off every day until Christmas so they can visualize how many days until Christmas.
And, since Ethan couldn't go to the Primary activity this morning (it was going to be breakfast with Santa, and he was really bummed), we decided to copy my friend Deneal and make an advent calendar of sorts with activities to do for the next 24 days until Christmas. Ethan loved cutting, folding and gluing, and he was very excited to read what was under Dec. 1: watch Polar Express as a family, which was on tv last night. Thanks again Deneal, for the fantastic idea.

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