BRR! When will Winter End?

We survived the school semester!  Last week my two older kids had final projects and semester exams in all of their classes.  My son managed to get the same score on four out of five of his exams.. We are still waiting on the score of the fifth, which happens to be his best class. The good news  is the score on the other four was a 90! Not to bad for his first semester in high school.   My oldest daughter is doing a program through the high school were she takes some of her classes online.  She does have a habit of procrastinating, so pretty much all of last week was spent catching up on work.  What you are looking at in the picture is her final Physics project.  If you ever need to know how to make a boat out of aluminum foil that will keep an egg afloat, this is how it is done.  We were both pretty relieved that this boat worked. Her first couple of tries did not float.   When you only have a few hours until the deadline, you want your project to work!..  It took me and the kids a few days to recuperate, and it was great not having homework for at least a few days.  Today the new semester started.  Our time schedule will be changing just a bit, and it might take a few days to get used to.  

This week we are trying to survive the weather.  We are currently in the third Polar Vortex of the month.  The weather people are saying that in the next 24-36 hours we might hit our all time record low temperature.  As you can see 748 schools in the greater Detroit area  have already closed for tomorrow, including the University of Michigan.  By tomorrow morning, that number will be even higher.    The lows with windchills could get as low as -35 degrees. and it would be unsafe for people to be outside for long. Kara has been worrying about the wild animals in this extreme cold. There has been a bunny that comes up to near our house from time to time. She sees it's pawprints frequently.  We also had a neighborhood cat come on our porch a few days ago.  When she tried to bring it in to warm up, it ran away. She is worried that it might not have found the way home. We already have a household of full of animals, I am not sure how they will feel if we bring in even more.  

Since it looks like we will be stuck at home the next few days, I will finally have the chance to take down the tree in our front room.  I have never been this late to take down Christmas decorations  before.  There just did not seem to be enough time with everything that we have had going on.  How many days until spring???