Good Riddance!

I don't think I've ever been more excited to say good-bye to a month as I am to January 2010!! The past 4 weeks have made up some of the longest weeks I think I've ever lived through (well, as an adult anyway). Between the abnormal amounts of snow we've gotten this year (I think in January alone snow fell more days than all the other days of the previous 2.5 years we've lived here!), the cloudy days (which seemed more abundant in recent days than past winters I remember), the short days (which are always hard), and Mark and I being sick for a combination of 2 weeks, it has been a very, very long month. I have been counting the days until February gets here. Not exactly sure why, because I'm sure February will bring more of the same, but at least there are usually some flowers that start popping up by the end signaling spring will eventually get here. Plus, according to this website, the sun now sets after 4:30pm and before long will be rising before 8am! I've noticed this week that there are even little bits of light left at 5pm most nights now. Hurray!!! The longer days are fast approaching!

But, before January left, it thought it would bring more snow,  so here are some happy moments from the past few days. It started snowing Friday and due to a co-worker stuck on a bus for nearly 3 hours trying to get to work from outside the city, I spent the morning at the Town House in her place. Here is a photo of one of the snow squalls from the front door:

It snowed off and on most of the day until late afternoon. Overnight we got around 6 inches more. When I cleaned the car off the next day, I realized how insufficient our tiny (think hand-sized) scraper was. It was taking me ages to clear all the snow from the roof of the car, especially (it's law here you are supposed to get it all off your roof so as to not blind those driving behind you when you start moving and it starts blowing. This Yank laughs at this. You'd never get anywhere if you did this where I grew up! But I digress). I resorted to just using my entire arm to scoop snow off. Much quicker! Good thing I brought an extra set of gloves for my photographing excursion on campus. To see some images from that trip, go here. They are some of my new favs! I had tons of fun creating the images thanks to Photoshop Elements I got for Christmas and have been trying to learn how to use. While you are at my photo blog, be sure to check out all the portrait posts I've put up this month. There are a few more from this fall still to come so stay tuned!

Here are a few more photos from my trip to campus:

When first walking on after parking on the street. I love this walk!

The sun was just starting to get far enough above the horizon to see it. Still the "sweet light" hour!

It's hard to see here, but I was enamored by the way the snow stuck out from the walls in small drifts, sometimes a couple inches away from the wall. See the above pic for what it looked like at a distance.

Do you see that BLUE sky?! It was a glorious morning in Old Aberdeen!

A fun tree I saw and added some texture to!

And last night we had a couple over that just moved here from Wake Forest and SEBTS, so that was fun finally getting to meet them (for me - Mark had already met them). So weird to talk about road names and places. It almost hurt my brain to come up with some of the places. Have we been gone that long?!

Now bring on FEBRUARY!!