An early morning, more so than normal.

 I took this photo at 6:25 am this morning( click on the photo to see it better), the colors in person were so much more vivid than shows up in this photo*sigh*

This was taken just 4 minutes after the first one. I must have moved as the photo is a bit blurred, oops.

This morning Mike had to be to work by 7am, which is approx. a 45 minute drive. They are working on a job that is an additional 45 minutes to an hour away and want to arrive on site by 8am.  So we bump the alarm back to 4:30 am, so we'd have plenty of time for breakfast, getting ready and doing the morning feeding.

Our temperatures are supposed to be into the low to mid 50's by tomorrow and stay in and around that range until late Friday, when another cold front moves in again. Even then the daytime highs are well into the 30's F but evening temps. will drop into the teens. 

We've felt spoiled, especially since this is January and typically our coldest winter month and yet we've only had to kept small fires going in the wood stove, just enough keep the chill off.  For the last week or more we've have been letting the fire go out in the evening. YEAH, sleeping through almost the whole night( except for the midnight calling*sigh* of my IBB, LOL!)  When we turned in last evening our inside temps was 76F( actually it was far to warm for my tastes) and when we got up, I checked and it was 62F, not bad, not bad at all.  Now the next few days a Chinook wind is blowing in the warm up, funny though how those winds feel like they are coming from Antarctica!  Our house will not stay as warm at night if those winds blow, but as long as we keep the temp. up during the day, we'll fair just fine.

Cortney has to work today and tomorrow and we have 12 dozen ( a mix of different cookies) to make for our ambulance service's annual refresher course. All First Responders, EMT or higher, in the state of Montana are required to have so many hours of Continuing Ed. and it is mandatory that part of these hours be a "refresher course" and "CPR certification".  So we know where Mike will be all weekend!

We all are looking forward to February's arrival, we have many events scheduled. The first of which is the; "Sheep Shearing Day" on the 12th! I will get pictures this year, I promise. This has become an annual tradition for us( of course Cortney just loves helping.  It's also fun to see people we've met through this event, that we only see at this event!  Then if our weather stays nice we'll be working on getting our cold tolerant crops planted in the green house as well as our seeds started indoors in our mini greenhouse, mid part of February. We're also hoping to have people signed up for our CSA, by no later than the 24th. That way we can ask what crops they'd be most interested in for their baskets. I think we plant a pretty well rounded garden selection already and just yesterday I mailed in our seed order, only adding a few new OP herbs, Okra, Eggplant and some OP spinach seed. 

Okay  that all the news from here. Praying the remainder of your week is filled with many blessings, much laughter and some rest too.