Hello everyone!

It sure has been a gray couple of days. On the bright side, it has warmed up quite a bit. Monday hit a high of about 20 degrees (positive 20!). It was still too cold in the hotel to paint, so we got some work done in the shop. You see, to keep cost and the use of fossil fuels down, the hotel is not heated all winter. We heat the floor that we are working on at the time, but that is it. As you can imagine, a lot of heat is lost through cracks and crevices, so it never gets much above 50 degrees on the floor we are working on. So, when the temperature was below zero outside, the heated floor was only around 30 degrees. That makes for miserable work, and paint does not dry right when it is that cold. So, Monday I sanded down some bar stools that eventually need to be stained. The wind is blowing the snow into huge drifts which makes it difficult to get to work. It's like climbing a bunch of little hills that you sink into. Monday night, I dug into my vocabulary cards. I am studying to take a big test at the end of the winter. It's not much fun.

Tuesday, the temperature got up to 30 degrees!! The wind was howling in the morning, and the electricity went out. Luckily, I had not left to go over to the hotel yet. The electicity was out for about three hours. We built a fire and got out our books. The power came back on about 11:15 am, just in time to grab lunch and head to the hotel. We got over to the hotel, and I went to work painting. Of course, the snow drifts keep getting bigger and bigger. Soon, we will be able to ski them!

Mrs. Collin's class has some questions for me, so here goes...

Have I seen any deer? I have seen deer in the woods. We don't get them right around the cabin like the bighorn sheep, but they are definitely out here.

Am I having fun? Of course I am having fun. This is great out here. I will admit that it was quite miserable when it was negative 20 degrees outside. For those couple of days I stayed inside. BOO! Besides those days, I been outside taking in the beauty everyday.

Any cell service? There is no cell service out here. We are very far back in the woods and mountains. The cool thing though is that there are ways to get cell service (well in the summer anyway). In the summer time, when I would climb to the top of mountains (even those over 10,000 feet high), I was able to call my mom to say hello! Cool, huh?

What time of day are the sheep around? Well, the sheep definitely have minds of their own. They seem to be around more in the mornings, but they show up all times of day. I don't see them at night though. The bighorn sheep move up high to protect themselves from predators like mountain lions.

What do I want for Christmas? This year is an easy year for me. I hope to get some cards from friends and family. I also hope that Skype will work so that I can talk to my family on Christmas morning.

Now, Mrs. Collins also said you were supposed to get some snow. If you do, take a handful of it and try to make it into a snow ball. Does it pack easily into a ball? Would you be able to make a good snowman out of it? If you said yes to those questions, then the snow has a high water content. The snow we have out here is very dry and powdery (low water content). It makes it very difficult to get to work like I mentioned before. I used my snowshoes today, but they didn't make much of a difference. I still sunk down to my knees in the snow.

I am really excited to get to research how plants and animals behave in the winter time. I can't wait to share with you what I find. As a warm up, can you think of some wild animals that hibernate for the winter? How about a few that don't? Can you name a few trees that lose their leaves in the winter? Do you know why they shed their leaves? Brainstorm some questions for me about winter in the mountains. When you get back from break, I will have all kinds of cool facts for you.