Happy New Year.

1-6-09 SHORT HILLS: We came back to NJ on New Years Day. Happy New Year, everyone. We got one day of skiing while in VT, at the Dartmouth Skiway, before everything froze up. The conditions were good, but only the Winslow side of the Skiiway was open. Maggie and Val loved it, Lucy hated it—I think she’s done with skiing. [check out her fourth-grade blog with the link on the left] On New Years Eve day, Maggie shoveled the pond, it had gotten a dusting of snow, in anticipation of a nighttime skating party to celebrate the new year.

We had dinner at the hibachi place in West Leb, which was packed with families, and on the way home, we noticed the temperature, as reported by the car, to be 7° and then 5° a bit later. Because Maggie had shoveled the pond, she and I felt that we had to skate at least a little. We decided to do one lap of the pond for each degree of temperature. By the time we got home, it was 2°. We actually did at least four or five laps before clomping back to the mud room, in our skates, to warm up. Strangely, no one else showed up to skate. We had a fire and watched South Park reruns while waiting for the ball to drop.

Back in NJ we have the remnants of a snow and temps around the freezing point. We may get more snow tonight. We lost a couple branches from the driveway junipers to the snow, or to the snow plowers.