Winter has arrived?

Happy New Year. Happy Birthday, Marge. It's actually -16 out this evening. I noticed it was a fair bit colder when I walked to church. My living room is cool enough at the best of times that it's not comfortable to sit in it without a blanket. However, adding a blanket is way cheaper than doing the mega insulation thing, although I wouldn't mind doing that. I have a big living room with lots of big windows and it makes it cool. However, I've lived in Yellowknife long enough that it's no big deal to me to need a blanket when sitting in any room. That's just a normal thing.

Had the crowd over for Sunday dinner today. It was a smaller crowd, less than 20 I think. We've had so many big meals lately, that we had soup (and leftover ham and scalloped potatoes). Loopie brought dessert and drinks. We made borscht, pizza soup and french onion soup, and I had leftover vegetable soup as well. Lots of choices. I only ate the pizza soup and a bit of ham - but I'll get to eat leftovers of all the rest this week, so that's not a real hardship. It was good to visit with everyone. It was especially nice to have Jeff, Glenda and Sonia come and visit. I don't get to see them as often.

I'm also thankful that because I had people coming over, I had to tidy up my house. I slept in this morning (woke up at 3 am and had trouble getting back to sleep and then before I knew it, it was 9 am! Church starts at 9:45 and it's a 5 minute walk. I got up, showered and dressed, unloaded and reloaded this dishwasher, got the soups started and was at church on time. (I can work really fast when I'm short of time.)
I've got everything cleaned up and put away afterwards except for the borscht, which needed to cook awhile longer. I think the dishwasher has done three full loads of dishes today. I'm very thankful for dishwashers. I also did at least two sinkfuls of pots and pans. However, I was able to serve everyone on real plates and bowls instead of paper plates, which is very nice to do. I'm thankful that I have sufficient to do that. I'm also very thankful for my three-pot slow cooker. (I bought it for myself for Christmas.) It's so nice for a crowd as can have three things on the go. Today I had three soups in it, plus another slow cooker for the borscht and the oven for the ham.