It was 2 degrees today in Goshen, Indiana! That’s pretty cold, in case you aren’t familiar with how a thermometer works. It didn’t stop my wife though. She bundled up Adilene in seventy different types of cold weather gear; blankets, sweaters, a beanie, gloves, boots, socks, more socks, several more blankets, and then, for good measure, some more blankets. If we added any more blankets we would’ve had to equip Adilene with a snorkel so she could breath properly. Janice wrapped her arms around the large ball of wardrobe and set it in the sled that Adilene got from Grandma and Grandpa Snader for Christmas. Then she took Addie for a quick ride through Grandma Detweiler’s backyard.

Adilene sure enjoyed it!

I also helped my pop-in-law get his chicken feeders working properly again. That’s not that interesting except I got to learn how the feeder auger system worked, which was interesting to me. I enjoy taking things apart and there’s something immensely satisfying about getting all the little pieces all back together again. Alternatively, it’s extremely frustrating when you can’t.

On the way home from Grandma and Grandpa Detweiler’s, we practiced being poor missionaries in a cheap, piece of junk minivan. We stopped at McDonalds to grab some hot food. I put my window down to get the food and suddenly the window wouldn’t go back up again! I laughed with delight. “Hey honey, look at this! The window won’t go up!”

Janice laughed too. “Yay! Now we can practice being poor missionaries in Siberia with a cheap minivan.”

I chuckled again, “Just what I was thinking! What fun!” This was going to be a great testing experience.

We bundled Adi up to her eyebrows and continued on our way home, which was about 15 minutes away. I pretended to be a careful driver and kept our powerful minivan under 45 mph. It wasn’t all that bad if I kept my hands on the right side of the steering wheel away from where the cold weather was blowing in. The roads were drifting shut pretty bad so people bought my careful driving ruse and didn’t seem upset with my slow driving. Most of them were in the ditch anyway.

We got home with only quivering lips and minor frostbite. Janice and I then took turns yanking on the window in a comical attempt to get it back to the closed position. I found that if I tried the switch about every two minutes, the window would go back up about 1/4″. My wife selflessly left me have all the enjoyment of nursing the window shut and ran into the house to warm up the sofa for me. I hope it’s ruthlessly cold until April that way I don’t have to fix the window until then. Maybe I should put Duck tape on the window as well to further enhance the poor missionary minivan stereotype. Janice would probably like that. I do a lot of nice things for my wonderful wife.