Getting Ready for Winter

I'm back home after a long stint of flying (10 out of 11 days, the day off being Halloween). While I was on my last trip, it snowed here. Cranky says it was about 3 inches but didn't last long. The kids and our guest dog, Toby, were very excited. Last night as I drove home from Boston, it was flurrying in the last 2 miles to our house. Yippee! It looks like winter is really coming so it was time to get ready.


To augment our heating oil this year, we put in a wood stove. It was installed a couple of weeks ago and Cranky has been busy procuring wood. Here's some of it:



Here's the new stove. It really heats the bedrooms upstairs so we have to keep the doors closed much of the time.


Here's Toby relaxing by the stove with Raymond. Toby will be staying here until sometime in January. So far he seems to like the cold weather.

A little while ago, Cranky took the boys to a snowmobile show and let Raymond sit on a "youth" snowmobile. It is the newer version of the small snowmobile he rode the last 2 years. Cranky thought Raymond would be too big for his old snowmobile (the Kitty Cat) so I got to thinking...

Okay, I started looking for a used 120 cc snowmobile. This morning Cranky showed me an ad for a 2000 Arctic Cat Z120. To make a long story short, here is the new toy in the garage:

This sled is in awesome condition. It has been barely used and meticulously maintained. This will be going nonstop in our yard when we get snow.

Bob is not big enough to drive it this year. He will probably be learning on the smaller one. (50 cc)

This is a very cool snowmobile. I would've KILLED for something like this when I was a kid. It is a 4-stroke, so it's relatively quiet and no mixing oil in the gas! Yeah! Raymond also likes that the headlight is working. (I couldn't find a new bulb for his other snowmobile and he couldn't ride very long after the sun went down.) He won't be able to take this on the snowmobile trails with us, but I told him I would take him to the pond down the road or maybe even out on the lake. We'll see.

Now, bring on the snow!!!