Record Breaking

Today we broke a record we would have preferred to remain unbroken. We had the lowest high ever recorded here in central Illinois. It was way below zero when we woke and stayed below all day, I think our high was 8 below with the low 18 below. We only got about 8 inches of snow according to weather.com but it sure seems like much more. Below is one of the lights Mark put up with a drift almost covering it.

Mike sent the 2 pictures below of the herd at Middle Grove. The first picture is blurry but we were so glad to see they all survived and are doing well. He placed the hay down in a valley out of the wind.

 This second picture shows the automatic waterer still working even after 18 below zero and wind chills of almost 50 below zero. Just 2 more days of this extreme cold is predicted before we get a warm up.

Anna brought Braelyn and Taegan over today. Braelyn had so much fun playing dress-up with Rhoda's old Pony Club medals and the dress Rachel sent over.

Phil came to pick them up in the Meister 4 wheel drive truck and still only made it half way up the hill the first try. Below is his second try, he backed all the way down to the road and got a run at it.

I made a big pot of chicken vegetable soup for dinner then Rhoda, Sarah and I went to mom's to play Mexican train with her and Karin but mom was putting together a 1000 piece puzzle and told us we had to each find 20 pieces first. Pretty frustrating puzzle. Sarah stopped and baked some monster cookies while we were working on that.

We quit even before finding the 20 pieces each and started the other game. I had by far the most with 196 points except in Mexican train it is the lowest number that wins.