Seasons Turn

As my blog title says, these are my spare moments; and as you can see, there have been few lately. 

From the rush of back-to-school, I stepped into learning new technology.  I have spent a lot of my time getting to know the new Smartboard in my class and seeing how others are using it by visiting on-line sites.  

In-servicing on the Smartboard is not that available.  I do have a tech day coming up in December and am really looking forward to it.

Autumn was beautiful this year; lots of hoarfrost and snow waiting until this last week made for a great start to winter.

We always get many fog days this time of year.  When we first moved into the area, we were told by old-timers that the hoarfrost is the reason for not finding beautiful trees in the area.  It weighs down the branches and breaks the weaker ones.  I guess this just comes with the weather; fog creates the hoarfrost.  

And beautiful as it is, it is damaging to the trees.

You can almost feel the heaviness of the air in this picture.  It was such a great walking day.

Chickadees are always around. 

 Though we can't don't always see them; their lively chatter is heard in the shelter-belts around school and home.

The sun warming the world in the morning as I was coming to school.

This week we had our first real snowfall of the year.  Other than a few sprinklings -- it held off.  I was working at school late on Thursday and by the time I walked home, there was a foot of beautiful soft snow piling up.  Needless to stay, soft snow doesn't stay long around here.  By morning it had blown into sharp dirty drifts.

 A weekend snowfall left another few inches of snow smoothing the landscape, and this, I am sure is here to stay.

As you can see, cold weather means hockey lights burning in the evening.  The young guys are preparing the rink, doing maintenance jobs and finally beginning the flooding.  Cold weather doesn't hinder them. 

And the lights make for a nice evening walk.

And of course, snow means we are closer to Christmas. 

 I started making Christmas cards for my mom.  I have a head-start this year, thanks to after Christmas sales last year!

These cards were fun to make, easy because my images are rub-ons (bought on sale). 

 Beautiful paper also makes for less fuss.