This restaurant window sums up our Christmas holiday. We spent it in Quebec visiting my family and it was below zero every single day. I am one of those rare creatures who enjoys a good cold winter, but this really put a damper on our fun.

This was one of the warmer mornings. Our dog loves the snow and the cold, but it was too much and really hurt her paws. We brought her to be fitted with dog boots. A total failure.

None of the boots fit her stumpy legs and big, pudgy paws. In this photo, she was patiently letting the sales person put on a fourth pair, without success.

Oh, and on the first morning after we arrived, she made the mistake of licking a metal doorstop. I recounted this story to colleagues at work and they begged me to stop, so I will just leave it there.

Another fun thing that happened was that our windshield washer fluid, the one I buy in Canada that’s good to 40 degrees below zero, froze solid in the car, so we were unable to clean our windshield at all, and neither could anyone else.

There were no walks in the woods and no skiing. We sat around inside, eating too much and trying not to get on each other’s nerves. I had a good novel, which probably kept me sane.

So it was with some relief that we headed south after the holiday, back to Rhode Island where winters are balmy by comparison – until a blizzard hit just a couple of days after we returned, followed by sub zero temperatures.

This was the view from my office during the storm. But we made it through unscathed, and we are cozy in our house despite the cold outside. It’s been a challenging couple of weeks, though.

Happy New Year!