Is Everyone Recovering?

Are you all recovering from the current round of holidays, as we are? We had a white Christmas, which was lovely, and too much food (obviously...). My parents left today after much radar watching to see if it was safe for them to travel back up to Wisconsin.

The white is quickly disappearing because we no longer have the arctic blast that we had all last week and instead have 50 + degree weather. Almost all of northern Illinois is under a flash flood warning from the snow melt and the rains that are coming. Next week it will get cold again and then we'll have loads of ice to contend with.

Here's the deal with Global Warming--as the air temperature rises, it can hold more moisture, so when you do get any kind of precipitation, it tends to be more than in the good old days of my childhood. We'll continue to get record breaking rain totals and yards of snow instead of inches--my mom has already measured around 36 inches of snow at their house and that's confirmed by official tallies. That's just for December in Madison, WI. Here, in Illinois, we've had a record amount of snow for the whole of 2008.

*sigh*

We all had a fun time with all the visiting relatives, and we all felt extremely grateful for everything we received and have. We played Pictionary and the Father/Me team almost caught up with the Husband/Son team. Sorry for the Sister/Brother-in-law team who barely got off the blocks. The Daughter/Mom team didn't care and my daughter enjoyed doodling in between turns.

So, in spite of the obvious global warming and up-the-stream-without-a-paddleness we are all in, we experienced much joy these last few days.

Here's a great take on what Christmas can be all about from my good friend Neo-Agrarian over at Suburban Agrarian. Here's hoping that you got to experience some of this less commercial brand of Christmas this year.