woooohoooo

the sun officially rose before 8am this morning and we are now gaining over 2 minutes of sun a day!!! Our solar noon altitude will hit 30 degrees by sunday (from a low of 23.9) on dec 21... I always notice the sun seems higher on the horizon about Feb 1, so i think that 30 degrees makes a difference. Long way to go to 70.7 (june 21) but we'll take it.

We had a warm rainy day yesterday, which melted our snow. Its the first time you could see the ground since Dec 4th! Just as the sun was setting the clear cleared to the west creating a rainbow. I've never seen a rainbow in January before, so we thought that was kind of cool. We only had our phones with us (we were in the car) so the picture isnt great, but here it is anyway.

in other news, a friend at work gave Bee a little notebook. At dinner the other night i noticed it was sitting on the table, so i picked it up and read the cover out loud to the family. "Bee's Dire" (Bee's Diary). So then I opened the book and started to read the first page to the family, and it said "Please do not read my dire." Frankie laughed so hard she fell backwards out of her chair. Poor Franks. Well, I learned my lesson about opening other people's diaries!

Athlete of the week....

And the winner is Cho Cho!! Cho loves playing in the snow. We had our first real storm of the season and must have gotten about 8 inches or so. Its cold but sunny and Cho Cho cant get enough of the white stuff. (The runner up is scott for shoveling all of that snow and doing such a dandy job, too!)

Speedy Lady

Congratulations to Angie, who ran the fastest 5k in Mid-Michigan for her age group in 2009. She ran the Alma Highand Festival 5k in 20:15 on Memorial Day weekend. That blew away the second place finisher, who ran a 21:07 in Ele's race. Full results are here.

When asked about her achievement, Angie said it gave her motivation to go out in the cold and dark tomorrow morning for a speed workout. We'll all be chasing her at this year's Highland Festival.