Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Journal Log: 12/06/2010 It has been about six months in the rental property. We survived the long hot summer and the crops were good. We were bracing for a cold winter and it has finally arrived. The pantry stores are good, but we are not sure if we are going to survive the freezing temperatures at night. We find ourselves sneaking into bed earlier each night to protect us from the nighttime temperatures as the old furnace seems to have trouble keeping the farmhouse anything close to warm. The temperature in the kids rooms upstairs was 49 degrees this morning, but they don't really complain, they are snuggled under many layers of blankets. Tonight with lows predicted in the teens we may need to move them downstairs and close off the upstairs which is really only passively heated by the downstairs. I hate getting out of bed at night to use the bathroom, as I have found that getting out of bed at night in your skivvies to urinate leaves my toes with frost bite and takes 30 minutes under the blankets to recover my core body temperature. Though it has been better after I started wearing sweat pants and sweat shirt to bed. We had to chip ice off the toilet this morning before we could flush.... well, not really but I won't be surprised if that happens by the end of winter!

We received our first snowfall this past Saturday with about two inches of accumulation. It was beautiful. We were raking leaves at the farm when it started and the kids were quite excited about it. So were Karen and I, as it got so wet it became unbearable to continue raking and hauling leaves that we had to just quit and sit back and enjoy looking at it.

Despite the cold, we are going to hunker down and suck it up. Hopefully next winter we will either be basking in the warmth of the sun indoors, or sitting by our fireplace keeping all warm and toasty! The house is coming right along and we absolutely are loving the way it is starting to look. It is hard to convey the open inside with the camera as the depth of field is so short with my lenses. But here is a peek at the outside.

We are hoping to have the roof shingled this week, and the windows should arrive late next week. I am crossing my fingers they do not botch up the special windows for the South side(front) as they are a key component of the passive solar design. The geothermal heat pump is supposed to be installed next week. It will not be operational until the house is wired and insulated. That is all the news from down here, right now I need to get my sweats on and go to bed!