I swear it was sunny here just five minutes ago...

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Seven months old and impervious to cold. He's a true Vermonter, all right.

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The balloon festival at the Shelburne Museum was amazing. We watched the balloons launch, then Dave and Trevor took a ride in a tethered balloon. Gavin and I stayed on land.

But my absolute favorite part of the evening was the nighttime balloon walk. The four of us claimed a spot on a big rock near the lighthouse and watched the ground crews return from their flights. They unrolled the balloons, tethered them, and lit them up like lanterns.

We were in a spot to see five of six, but toward the end of the night, we took and walk in the dark around Shelburne Farms to see the others. It's always a little creepy to wander empty museum grounds at night.

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Trevor wanted to take home a sheep from the Champlain Valley Fair. I draw the line at chickens.

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Our Lola beehive died over the winter. On first glance, it looks like they made honey too far away from the center of the hive and they never ventured up to the higher boxes to eat. Not good for them, but we took apart the top deep box and found a few frames full of clean, capped honey for us.

We haven't harvested enough honey (and probably won't until next year) to make the purchase of an extractor worthwhile, but using cheesecloth and a lot of patience, we extracted eight jars of raw honey (no heat applied) for the family. Trevor especially enjoyed chewing on spoonfuls of honey and beeswax like bubblegum.

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The leaves are turning this weekend -- it's a great show if you have a chance to take a drive through the Adirondacks.



The last few trips to NJ, we've been breaking the ride into two days with Albany at the center. It takes longer, but there's less chance of someone falling asleep at the wheel at 1:00am.

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Civil defense sirens, also known as tornado sirens, are pretty much the most useless warning devices ever invented. You hear the wail, and it means: Something Very Bad is happening, but we can't tell you where, when, or what. Enjoy!

I mention it because during this week's severe weather, I heard one of the aforementioned sirens going off across the lake in New York. I had no idea what it specifically meant. Was it just an alert about the coming storm? Does it mean tornado possible? Tornado sighted? Tornado in my back yard? Osama bin Laden at Aubuchon Hardware? Hellfire and brimstone raining down over a soon-to-be post-apocolyptic Lake Champlain?

I have an unobstructed view to the Adirondack mountains, and all weather comes from the west, so I gathered emergency supplies and watched the sky. In the year 2000, I'd like to see an automated IM, text message or twitter service to supplement the siren and tell me exactly why it's being sounded so I can decide whether to hunker down in the basement or play in the rain.

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Shelburne Farm hosted a 4-H Pancake Breakfast this weekend. Fresh pancakes, seasoned sausages and lots of hot, fresh maple syrup served in steaming clay pitchers. The syrup was so hot that it melted a plastic cup that one young diner poured it into for the trip back to the table.

The Farm was also offering tours of their opeating sugar house, but the boys had worn brand-new sneakers with spotless uppers and no traction, (anxious for spring, I guess), so we didn't climb the hill to the demonstration. Next time I'm doing a proper footwear check before we leave the house.

We stopped at another Shelburne (or Charlotte, it was a back road, so I'm not sure) sugar house, with signs all over town, but they had put their signs out early and weren't boiling sap for another hour. I've been surveying syrup makers and everyone agrees that this year the maple sap is sweeter than usual, though no one can quite explain why.

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We went outside after dinner with friends the other night to find everything had iced over in just a few hours. Even our car in their driveway had a 1/2" clear shell that we had to chip away to get inside. Then we were stuck in a rut of ice which had been pliable slush when we drove into it. Dave got behind the car and pushed while I revved the engine.

When we got home, we played around outside in the dark for a while. Trees crackled as the wind moved them and bits of ice showered down on our heads. The power flickered a few times, but never actually went out -- a very real possibility in a town with one electric line being stretched to the breaking point by heavy ice.



I was kind of hoping that the power would go out, to justify the purchase of the generator that cost more than our first car.

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Saturday is errand day. Each week, we make the trek into Burlington or St. Albans and spend the day filling up on gas, restocking groceries, getting haircuts, eating lunch at a restaurant, grabbing tools or materials for house projects, buying clothes or shoes, going to the movies... pretty much anything that requires you to be near civilization.

It's a long day, so we tend to stick something fun in the middle, like a trip to ECHO, or a movie. This week, we saw The Spiderwick Chronicles. I'm hoping that the next errand day will have a trip to a sugaring farm in it -- it's the 7th Annual Maple Open House Weekend. Mmmm, syrup!



Trevor climbed every snow & gravel mountain in the Shaw's parking lot post-haircut, post-movie, pre-groceries. This pile was over 20-feet high and made me a little nervous. A random male shopper, celebrating the feat of scrambling up this slippery thing, yelled out to Trevor, "King of the hill!" I bet he wanted to climb up there too.

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Last week, we woke up to a day of no school and a thick layer of ice coating trees, power lines, cars and rooftops. After checking that the sump pump runoff pipe was unstuck, we crunched around for a while and examined the effects. No damage, and it was warm enough that most of the ice was dropping off the trees as we watched.



I used the tractor to plow the driveway while Trevor shoveled the walkway and front porch. It was the kind of slush that turns into a solid sheet of ice once the temperature drops, so we had to get it up quickly. During the last "wintry mix," I left the slush and we had two inches of ice beneath our snowfall for weeks. Walking to the end of the driveway to meet the school bus was an Olympic sport.



It rained for a while, and then the mercury started to fall. Boots and snowshoes don't help much on ice. I think we'll need some snow & ice cleats for next year. That said, I still try to get the mail every day in my worn-out, tractionless Crocs and I slide halfway there. Trevor's nod to the upcoming spring was his attempt to play with water balloons outside. To Vermonters, 34-degrees is apparently outside water play weather.



I am particularly glad that even on a long snow day Trevor didn't turn on (or ask to turn on) the television. On the flip side, he did tie one cat to each end of a long ribbon from my craft stash and giggled as they pulled each other around the house. I don't think the cats were quite as amused. Where's that remote again?

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The stack of trees never really went up like everyone expected because of the damp branches, but every once in a while a tree or two would dry out and catch fire.

Trevor stood as close as the Fire Department would let him, which was very close. We only felt the ice crack once.

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The water was icy, the wind was frigid and the boat had a hissing leak, but we made a valiant attempt to go boating on Lake Liloia.

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Question: When 20 inches of snowfall on a four-acre field suddenly melts during a weekend warm up, where does the water go?

Answer: Nowhere.

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The snow-covered ice surface of Lake Champlain at North Hero.
Illuminated by a bonfire on the ice.

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