Yay! It's been sunny for 3 days!

Ahhh, sunshine!  For the past 3 days, we have been treated to the glow of our closest star.  I think this brings the count to about 14 sunny days out of 49 days total.  That's almost 30%,  a bit better than the <25%  the proportion was running before this week.  Maybe it gets better towards summer?

It is freezing cold, now, however.  I should have known that the miserable gray cloud did do one positive thing:  it was keeping us warm (well, warmer than bitter cold!).  Z played soccer last night and it was -3 C (Anyone know how to get this primitive blog editor to print special characters such as the degree symbol?  Please let me know!).  He came down, ready for practice in 3 pairs of pants, 3 shirts, 1 sweater, 2 jackets and 2 pairs of socks.  He also had his shin guards on, but I don't think that was really necessary.   The kid is definitely a trooper.  I would have lasted about five minutes out there, but he played for 90.  I have to remember to ask him which is worse - soccer in NC in August, or in Kiel in January?  My answer would be both, and you should just play baseball in the spring in NY, but Z probably has a different opinion.

The kids had a really nice afternoon yesterday.  Both had friends to play with, and they spent a couple of hours on the playground.  Below is an elaborate 'fort' (the large hole in the sand).  J, L and 'crew' have been working on this and another hole elsewhere in the playground for a few days now.  It is too cute for words.

We may get snow here Monday or Tuesday... Had to happen, as precipitation is so frequent, and the temperature has been at or below freezing for the past couple of days.


I still maintain, in the absence of photographic evidence, that it is quite pretty here, when the sun comes out.  I imagine Spring will be very pretty.  Whose coming to visit?