Baby, es ist kalt draußen!

Well, we got a lot more white stuff than we thought!  Just a few inches, but it's still extremely windy out - we can't tell if it's still snowing, or if it's just the wind blowing the previous snow around.  I do know that it is, for lack of a better way of explanation, colder than a well digger's ass!  As I'm typing this, it's 13°, with a windchill of -5°!  As my late, great Aunt Phyllis would say, "This will not do!"

Although it provided us with a nice leisurely day in which to catch up on TV episodes online and just relax, do a little laundry, and smell the wonderful cookies Jenny made, it did prevent us from the plans we had made for today.  We were supposed to go to Hermann, MO for their annual Christmas festivities.  Hermann, for those of you who don't know, is a really old German town dating back to the 19th century.  Jenny's family had a big farm there at one time, which had been splintered and sold over the years until one of her cousins bought all the land back recently.  Now it's back in the family.

Anyway, the town celebrates the Christmas season every year with a couple of weekends of events including a tour of the St. George Catholic Church Rectory, live Nativity Scene, the Deutschheim Weinachtfest (a mini Christmas festival within the big festival, at the Deutschheim State Historic Site),  and a Kristkindl Markt, which is a holiday market with vendors in full traditional costumes. 

We would really have loved to have gone, but it just wasn't worth risking life and limb to travel out there.  Apparently it was just really nasty out there - especially out west, towards Hermann.  Therefor, I made my stroke green and white: Christmas trees all covered in snow.  They're fun to look at - from the warmth of my house or car.  I may look into getting one of those Scooby Doo Snuggies or something!