Frozen

As all the kids and all the teachers went back to school, Dallas was still experiencing freezing temperatures. To the disappointment of the kids it was very dry so there was no snow, no ice (except on parts of the roads - boring), and no school delay.

But while collecting deadwood for our fireplace I found a phenomenon I'd never seen in Texas before. I'm sure it's happened before - I've just never seen it. For all of you that have experienced this sort of thing lots of times feel free to laugh at us. (We'll laugh back when ya'll have droughts) Here are the boys enjoying the frozen creek (ditch).

Other pictures are of the lake. The water lapped up onto the branches making giant tear-drop shapes and encasing twigs in a lacquer of ice. It reminds me of when the Pevensie children were visiting the Beaver's House in Narnia. Lewis said the water was frozen in fantastical shapes. Now I know he said it was frozen as if it froze all at once, and this is not what he meant - but I'm a Texan and frozen anything is rather exotic. James brought home a big piece frozen around a twig that was all spheres and roundedness.

The creek appeared to have frozen while it was full. Then the water drained away from under the ice leaving a glassy roof over the pebbly bottom. James had a lot of fun breaking that ice. He even walked across some of the ice that still had water underneath. Peter wanted to walk over all the ice everywhereWe were able to see the air bubbles floating around under there. No fish - it was just a ditch. !