Global Warming?!?!

Yeah....riiiiiiiiight. I, for one refuse to believe it. We have had one of the coldest Summer's on record, and after a rather nice (but short) Fall...we got SNOW on October 9th this year. I suppose that's not unheard of here in MinneSNOWta, but the first snow of the year generally melts as it hits the bare ground, and even the white stuff sitting atop the grass, normally melts by days end.

We had our monthly "Ladies' Night Out" at church last night, and as someone was leaving around 1 am, they came back in to warn the rest of us that our vehicles were covered with snow. I think partially because the rest of us didn't want to go out and face the cold facts, we settled in and chit-chatted for another two hours. Finally, at about 3am, we wandered out into the parking lot...and found this:

Luckily, I did have a scraper in my vehicle...most of the others ended up using credit cards to scrape their windows...but none of us had gloves...and it was c-c-c-cold! A couple of the girls even had a little 3 am snowball fight...but i didn't participate. I took this picture of my van, thinking that the snow would be melted by the time we got up this morning, and no one would believe it was even there. I was wrong.

Of course, when CJ woke up this morning, he was pretty excited about going out to play, and wanted to put his new winter coat, hat and mittens on to try them out. Fortunately, last year's model of boots and snow pants still fit him. He was having a blast just running around in the white stuff, despite the bitterly cold wind...so I guess he stayed warm enough.

I think he was trying to do the hand signs that the big kids always do in the picture above...but it kinda loses something with his fingers inside the mittens!

Despite my dislike of the cold and the early snow, I was struck by the awesome beauty of the brightly colored leaves intermingled with the sparkling whiteness, and the still-green blades of grass peeking out between them.

CJ was running around being silly, and "posing" for me. I wanted to get his attention for a close-up, so I asked him how many days there were until his fifth birthday...

I'm guessing he's holding eight fingers up underneath those mittens!

Oh well, I just hope this snow has not quite moved in for the season...we've got things to do before then. Ray put in a new door on the side of the house about a month ago, but he's either been busy working elsewhere, or it's been raining out ever since that time. We NEED to get the new back door installed. I was reminded just how much cold air comes in around the old one today, while the frigid winds of winter were inviting themselves in.