Dad

My sweet dad passed away last night. Mark and I feel so blessed that we were able to be with him and Mom when he died in his own bed at home. Polly was with us earlier in the day, and she took some wonderful photos. You can see them here.

Footloose

I am deeply contented this evening.

The church youth group had an evening of line dancing. Kids from 3 different congregations (we all meet in the same building, but at different times) lined up in the gym and danced away. Afterwards we stuffed them full of awesome refreshments.

The best part of all...I got to dance alongside my oldest grandson, Josh! Makes my grandma-heart so, so happy...

Morro Bay Memory

Last Saturday I attended a writing workshop sponsored by the Oregon City Library. I spent a wonderful afternoon in the company of women writing bits and pieces of story. Our workshop leader was Trista Cornelius, one of the writing teachers at Clackamas Community College. She shared excerpts from memoirs* and then issued writing prompts based on something from the memoir.

One of the prompts involved lots of sensory details from a childhood memory. She suggested writing something that had to do with a school cafeteria, but I have almost zero memories of school cafeterias as a child, so I went with the sensory details of an early beach memory. It is set in Morro Bay, California, the town I lived in until I was 14.

Morro Bay Memory

           There was a narrow strip of beach beneath the towering stacks of the PG&E electrical generation plant. It was not a sunny beach because it was tucked between the shadows of the PG&E stacks. We called them smoke stacks, which was incorrect, but calling them steam stacks would have sounded funny and it never occurred to us. No, it was not a sunny beach—if the sun wasn’t behind the PG&E stacks immediately to the south, it was behind Morro Rock a quarter-mile to the north—but we went there often, I think because it was a good place for my mother to read her books. Not that they had to be read in the shade, but the riprap--huge black rocks stacked between the beach and the harbor road--cut the constant northwest winds, and she didn’t have to worry about my brother and me drowning ourselves in waves because there weren’t any.

            The little beach was just the right size for a four-year-old, and when my mother took us there so we could play and she could read, I experienced the sense of enclosure that comes to little children when they are cupped within a bit of the world that has become its own place altogether. The gulls dipped and swung overhead, their cries part of the ceiling of sky. Mostly I patrolled the border of wet sand, molded into hard little ridges by the lapping wavelets in the harbor, gathering brown and gray periwinkle shells only a little smaller than my thumb. My mother, sitting on her beach towel with a novel in her hand, was far enough away that she couldn’t hear me narrating my own story in real time, a third-person drama that interested no one but me.

            “She walked along the water slowly,” I intoned, watching my bare feet as the wet sand made little sucking noises with each step. “She was looking for shells, and pretty soon she found one.” Another shell for my pocket. “Her brother was at the other end of the beach and her mother was reading a book.” The wind blew my white-blonde hair across my face and I brushed it away. “Then she found another shell.” It was a narrative that I carried inside my head most of the time, but the only chance I had to articulate it aloud was here at the little beach, where the gulls and the wind and the quiet roar of the PG&E plant covered my voice and made me invisible. 

*The memoirs Trista drew from were

Lost by Cheryl Strayed

Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavich

The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber

Lifesaving by Judith Barrington

Trista also highly recommended Writing Memoir by Judith Barrington for those of us delving into memoir.

Grandma-ish

I was hanging out with the teenage girls at Church during our youth group on Wednesday night. It was a lovely, mellow evening. The girls were using fabric markers to decorate pillow cases with this year's theme and visiting with each other.

I was glad to have some time to just chat with some of the girls. We were very laid back.

Somehow Sydney and I got to talking about texting. I told her how reluctant I had been to begin using a cell phone, and that I had only learned to text so I could communicate with my family when I went on a 50-mile solo backpacking trip 5 years ago.

She looked at me kind of funny, so I said, "You know, because I could get cell reception up on the ridges. I'd send a text message to my daughter that told her where I was." [Mark was at scout camp that week.] "So if they didn't hear from me in a day or so they would know where to start looking for me," I explained.

Sydney looked at me funny again, and then she said, "You know, Sister Haynie, you're not very grandma-ish."

I made some comment about my 23rd grandchild just being born a couple of weeks ago, and she said, no, that wasn't what she meant.

"My grandmother does things like, you know, wash the dishes, clean the house. Vacuums. She vacuums a lot," Sydney said. And she added, "You're not really like that."

I took it as a compliment...the nicest one I'd had all day.

Calling my mom from the PCT

Aug 1, 2008

Wishing her a happy birthday

Be of good cheer

I try to pray every morning.
It has become a habit that I deeply value - helps me get the day started right, refocuses my thinking, slows me down to pay more attention to thoughts that come, inclines me to respond to those little nudges that guide my day.

Here I am, nearly 60 years old, still learning how to pray.
It's not just a long list of requests, you know?
I'm trying to do more listening and less talking during prayer.

So a couple of mornings ago, I was feeling pretty blah, a little overwhelmed, maybe just a little worried about some dear family members slogging through life...

Trying to listen.

And the answer that came? Be happy.

That was all. Just "be happy."

Which is a choice, you know. Not something that happens when the bluebird lands on our shoulder, oh no, but an honest-to-goodness decision to look around at the messiness of this mortal experience, and be happy anyway.

When Christ said, "Be of good cheer"--which he said quite a few different times--he wasn't just giving us a little wave and saying, "Have a nice day."

It's a commandment.
Be of good cheer, even when the world is crappy.
Be of good cheer, because no matter what else is going on, Christ atoned for all of the frustration and pain and sometimes downright awfulness of mortality.

Be of good cheer. Be happy.

20 years ago today

Twenty years is a third of my life so far.
Twenty years is the tiniest of geologic-time blips.

Twenty years ago I was a senior at Lewis and Clark College. A senior in college with five children and an unhappy marriage. Hanging on.

Twenty years ago I didn't have a cell phone (no one did) or email (again, no one did).

I was a senior in college, majoring in English, and I had snagged a prestigious spot (in English-major circles) on the editing board of the college literary magazine. Ooooh. We met once a week, on Monday afternoons.

I had five children and I was a senior in college and I was on my way to the lit mag meeting but I stopped at a phone in a corner of the student union to call home. I didn't have a cell phone (no one did), but I knew about this phone I could use for free (just dial "9"), so I called home to check on the kids.

Mothering-by-phone. Make sure they had a simple supper underway, sort out any sibling conflicts, make it look like I was still being a mom even though I was a senior in college with five kids at home.
(And an unhappy marriage.)

No one had cell phones.

Twenty years ago it was a different world, a world where you couldn't always get ahold of someone, even if you needed to. I could walk across my college campus at five o'clock in the afternoon, and not one of my children could call me. Not one. I was so sure that everything was fine. I was just calling home to check in. What was the worst that could happen?

Remember telephones? With curly cords? Attached to the wall?
The alcove in the student union was painted gray. The telephone and its curly cord was attached to a gray wall.

The phone rang. Rang. Rang. Rang.
The phone was finally answered by an unfamiliar voice. Family chaos crisis chaos crisis chaos crisis.

I didn't have a cell phone. No one did. My mind went gray and blank. Like the wall.

On my way to the parking lot, before I climbed in the car and drove to the hospital and my daughter, I stopped at the room full of lit mag editors to tell them I couldn't make today's meeting.

On Tuesday, the next day, (twenty years ago tomorrow), I bought a pager.
Two weeks later my unhappy marriage imploded.

It's so true--isn't it--that you just never know...
You wake up in the morning, you make your plans, and still, you just never know...

I guess what I'm trying to say is this:
The world has changed a lot in twenty years, and so have I.
You might say this was all a long time in the past.
But in some ways, it has only been the tiniest of blips.
In some ways, it could have happened yesterday.

Pussy Willows, Roller Coosters, and an Unwelcome Guest

Sometimes it's the little things that make the big news here on Laurel Lane.

Pussy Willows
The weeping pussy willow tree is in bud.

 I remember reading about pussy willows in books when I was a child. They seemed so exotic to me then because there are no pussy willows that grow on the central California coast. I still remember the thrill I felt when I first discovered a pussy willow tree a few blocks from my home after I moved to Oregon. About 5 or 6 years ago, Mark and I bought a weeping pussy willow tree at a plant sale. Now I have pussy willows in my very own yard. I clipped a few branches to bring indoors today, and I feel like a wealthy woman.

Roller Coosters

The mail carrier brought such a treat this week: a letter from Lala! Love her 3-year-old penmanship.

"Hi Grandma, I made you a roller cooster. (heart) Olivia"

I turned her letter over to see what a roller cooster might be:

Yup, it looks like a roller cooster to me!

Actually, when I went back and took a closer look at her letter, I realized that she had attached a little tail to the second "o" in "cooster," so it probably really says, "coaster." But I think "cooster" is pretty cute, so I'm sticking with that for now.

It never ceases to amaze (and embarrass) me when I see how many of my grandchildren are able to read and write before they ever reach kindergarten. I do not remember teaching my children to read before they started school. Some of them could write a little, and I do remember teaching them to make letters by drawing dotted lines in the shape of letters for them to trace over, but nothing like a whole letter like this, written without any dotted lines. Katie said she did help Olivia with the spelling, but Olivia actually held the pen and wrote the whole letter herself. And addressed the envelope. And drew the roller cooster.

(Just for the record, all of my children did graduate from high school in spite of having a pre-K slacker mother.)

I have an early childhood memory of "writing" of my own. I was probably about Olivia's age. I was sitting at the dining room table, across from my mother, who was writing her weekly letter to my paternal grandmother. Mind you, my mother did not get along very well with her mother-in-law, but she was a good daughter-in-law, and she wrote a letter to my father's parents every week. I remember sitting at the table while my mother wrote, with a pen in my hand and a piece of paper in front of me. I remember making whole lines of looped "l"s - lower-case cursive-type l's. Or maybe they were e's. I remember thinking "Whoa, I'm writing!" and simultaneously knowing that I was only pretending, not really writing. Not like Olivia (or Arora, or Abbi, or Katie, or Seth, or Becca, or...).

I guess kids today are just a whole lot smarter!
(And, of course, they have brilliant parents.)

An Unwelcome Guest
Mark and I have a pretty set routine in the mornings. One of us hops in the shower while the other one heads downstairs to get breakfast started. A week or so ago, I ran across this fellow, making his way from the dining room to the kitchen.

Uggghhh!!! Yes, it's a slug. He was about 2.5 inches long. Skinnier than a big, fat banana slug, like we see on our hikes. This was just a little garden variety guy. He was actually making pretty good time across my smooth floor. I was surprised at how quickly (for a slug) he was moving. But still. It was a slug in my house. Not acceptable!! He quickly became a resident of the (outdoor) trash can.

Mark and I can't figure out how he got inside the house in the first place. Our house is generally pretty bug-free, except for the occasional swarm of fruit flies in the summer.  (Except, of course, for a couple of memorable yellow jacket infestations in long-ago summers...those are stories that will have to wait for a future post...)

Mark thought maybe he rode in on one of our shoes, but that just didn't make sense to me. Could he have come in all the way through the sump drain into the basement, and then all the way from the basement into the kitchen? That would be quite a hike for a little critter.

I've lived in the house nearly 34 years, and this is the first time I've ever had a slug in my kitchen. Maybe he's a harbinger of climate change??

Time will tell...and in the meantime I'm not walking barefoot in a dark kitchen!

I-Spy Fabric Ball

Katie's mother-in-law, Trish, sent photos of a beautiful fabric ball she made for her darling grandson, Calvin.

 Love the red polka-dot middles with the bright I-spy fabrics on the outside. 

Calvin approves!

Lucky little boy to have such a doting grandma!

To make your own fabric ball, click here for the tutorial.

(If you're interested in a few stats, you might like to know that the fabric ball tutorial just keeps chugging along. It gets around 30-40 hits every day, from readers all over the world. It is far-and-away my most popular post ever, with a total of over 18,000 views so far. Not bad for a little grandma blog!)

Welcome to Avalon!

David called late last night to say that their new baby has arrived!
He and Holly had planned for a home birth, and everything went very well.

Introducing...Avalon!

Avalon Eve arrived at 11:20 pm last night.
She weighed 8 lb 3 oz, and she is 19 inches long.

It's a good thing that David learned lots of first aid skills on the way to Eagle Scout...because Avalon arrived about 20 minutes before the midwife! David caught Avalon successfully. He couldn't say enough about Holly, and how calm and brave she was. (David says the midwife wasn't slow...it's just that Avalon was fast!)

Here are a few more family photos.

 David and newborn Avalon

 Beautiful girls...Holly and Avalon

Arora and Ender welcome their new little sister

Love the look on all three faces...

Arora and Ender slept through the whole thing. They were excited to welcome their new little sister this morning. Just think...it's better than waking up to a stocking full of toys on Christmas morning!

And if you're wondering how many...yes, this is grandbaby #23 for Mark and me. SO amazing! We can't wait to meet this little gal.

(PS - Many thanks to Sarah, who showed up just in time to help a friend!)

It's never too late for friendship

Partway into my 9th-grade year (waaaaay back in 1968 or so), a new girl moved to town. Her name was Ann. Someone--a counselor or a teacher, I suppose--asked me to show her around the school. That was the beginning of a deep and loving friendship that lasted all the way through our high school years.

I have sweet and happy memories of spending the night at her house, doing homework together, eating lunch on the lawn at school, listening to the chirping of the finches she kept in a large cage, soaking up her mother's kind counsel to me, enjoying the joking and teasing with her father and brother.

Ann always seemed a little exotic to me. Because her father had worked for USAID, she had spent much of her childhood in Malawi, Africa. She missed our senior year of high school because she elected to travel to Taiwan on her own and study there for the year. After high school, our ways parted, but we kept in touch. She eventually went to work for the State Department and has been posted in various places, mostly in Asia.

Over the years as I was raising children, it was always a treat when the occasional box from Ann arrived. It was generally an assortment of clothing and miscellaneous items from the country she was living in. Her Christmas cards were richly decorated with Chinese dragons.

It was at least partly due to Ann's influence that I hosted 5 different full-year foreign-exchange students when my children were at home. The quilt she sent to Mark and me when we married hangs on our living room wall still. My youngest daughter, Katie--Kathleen Ann-was named for my high school friend and me. I think it is partly due to my friendship with Ann that I have enjoyed being blog friends with Bridget (here's the link about our face-to-face meeting last summer).

But our contact has decreased over the years, and I have missed Ann. The last Christmas card I received from her, several years ago, had no return address. From time to time I have toyed with opening up a facebook account, just so I could try to find her that way. Then, last year, my parents forwarded the Christmas letter they received from Ann's mother, Maria. Following clues from Maria's letter's return address, I did a little google searching and found a phone number for Ann's mother in California. I called her a year ago, and we had a lovely conversation. Maria wanted to know about my family, my life, and I wanted to know about hers. I hoped I could get in contact with Ann again, through Maria, but she said she couldn't give me Ann's address. I didn't know if it was due to security issues with the State Department, or some other reason.

Of course, Ann isn't the only high school friend I keep in contact with. My friend Jill, who was maid of honor when I married Mark, lives in California and checks in here at the blog regularly. Ginger lives in New York and sends occasional emails about her family and her work for the Department of Defense. For several years her son lived in Lake Oswego, and she always called when she was in town visiting her son. We got together a few times. And Mark Kelley sends Christmas cards, occasional emails, and even came to visit a couple of years ago. All of these dear friends shaped who I am today and I am grateful for our ongoing contact. We all have full and busy lives, lives that rarely intersect, but we know where one another is, and we still matter to each other.

A few weeks ago, when I cleaned off my office desk, I found Maria's (Ann's mother's) telephone number again. I tucked it away (I thought) while I finished cleaning, but then when I went to find the number and call her, I had lost the number! I was so sad. I looked through all the papers I had sorted, but it wasn't there, and I was left to assume that I had accidentally let it slip into the many reams of paper I recycled on that busy cleaning day.

On Saturday, I looked inside my old address book--I don't even remember why, now--and I found the slip of paper with Maria's phone number. You can bet that I didn't lose it again. Maria and I had a lovely phone conversation, and by Sunday morning, I had two email in my inbox: one from Maria, and one from Ann.

It was that easy. She is in Tokyo now, where the clock is 17 hours ahead of Oregon's. By Sunday evening the timing was right--it was Monday morning in Japan, and it just happened to be a holiday that day--and since she had the day off, she was able to call me on one of the embassy lines that connects to the US. We talked for nearly an hour.

In the email just before our phone call, when we were agreeing on a time to call, I told her that I could still hear her voice, what it sounded like.

Ten minutes later, when the phone rang, that's exactly what I heard. My friend, who I have missed so much over the years. I would have known her anywhere. She sounded exactly like herself, and it was just what I needed to hear.

What a week

It's been a crazy-busy week here on Laurel Lane.

Last weekend we traveled to Washington for Katie's baptism. So exciting to have an eight-year-old granddaughter! Josh, Sarah, and Kat traveled with us. They were really good about the long drive. It makes my grandma heart so happy to see the cousins together.

 A "Kathleen" moment - Kat, me, Katie on her baptism day

 Katie and Sarah 

Seth and Josh

 Kat, me, Becca

 Anson

One of the best things about Katie's baptism was the opportunity to connect with family we don't see very often. Eric's parents, siblings, and their families came from Seattle. The travelers who came the farthest were Katie's birth mom, half sister, and birth grandparents, who came all the way from North Carolina and Alaska for her special day. What a wonderful miracle to have this large and loving family all together around one dear little girl!

We arrived home and I dived into the last-minute preparations for the annual "New Beginnings" event for the Young Women on Wednesday night. The church class I teach was in charge of it this year, and my assistant and I have been working on it for several weeks. Planning fancy parties is not one of my talent areas, but my assistant, Rene', is a pro, and she helped us look good.

The decorations were girly and fun.

 Savannah conducted the event - did a great job.

The girls sang some beautiful songs.

Meanwhile...poor Mark was sick with an intestinal bug on Tuesday and Wednesday. Ugh. In case you're not a teacher and you don't know this, it is much worse to be out sick and have to make sub plans. It's easier to just come in and do it yourself...so you know how sick he was, to miss two days in a row.

Today was inservice day and I presented a 7-hour training to the high school teachers. I had them actually take one of the new standardized tests that our juniors will take in two years. Some of them grumbled about taking the test, but once they got into it, they could see that it really is quite different from the way that our students have been tested in the past. We had some lively discussions about what it will mean in our classrooms, and the ways we can change how we teach to help our students be prepared. The tests will be more rigorous than anything our students have encountered in past state tests. However, a good part of that rigor comes from tests that assess skills in a much more "real world" way, and I think it is a positive, though challenging, change. 

It's been a good week, but daunting at times, and I am drained.

Oh, I am enjoying a quiet evening at home, with no big projects to prepare!

Wonderful Sewing Patterns at a Great Price

$24.95 for 18 wonderful PDF sewing patterns...wow!!

Katie has all the details posted on her blog.

Don't put it off...the deal is only offered through February 9.

Fruits of the Spirit

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperence: against such there is no law. 

Galatians 5:22-23

I made several of these yummy and healthy Fruit and Yogurt parfaits for the Young Women's class I teach at Church. The fruit colors were inspired by the Value colors of the YW program (white is the yogurt, and gold will be the granola we'll add when I serve them).

Our lesson today asks the girls to ponder who she is and who she can become. It's a good question to think about.

You can find the quick-and-easy directions for the parfaits on The Red Kitchen, where Katie suggests using wide-mouth pint Mason jars for easy tranportability. Thanks, Katie!

Quick Tutorial - Sewn Booklets

Last week I wanted some quick and easy mini journals for the class of Young Women that I teach at Church.

I made these little booklets. The girls loved them! Several of the girls were surprised to find out that you could actually sew paper.

Really, these are "sew easy"!

Here's how I made them:

 Use card stock for the cover. Cut it in half, and then fold it to make the cover.

 To make the covers a little fancier, I used three fabric triangles to make it look like little flags on the cover. I got this cute idea from Polly. You should check out her cards. They are fancier than mine. I cheated simplified.

Her cards are based on another idea, which was a darling bunting quilt she made for Becca.  Sigh...some people are so talented. Anyway, back to my three little triangles...

You just lay them out where you want them and make a line of stitching across the cover. I do backstitch at the beginning and end of the line, because the stitches tend to come loose in the paper otherwise.

 I used colored computer paper for the pages inside the cover. Again, I cut them in half and then folded.

 Just lay them inside the card stock cover, and then stitch right down the middle. Be sure to backstitch at beginning and end again. That's all there is to it!

Note: you don't even have to worry about matching the thread color. This is just a little paper booklet, people. Different thread colors make a cute contrast on this project. I just used whatever I had in my sewing machine had lots of fun with the colorful thread.

What cute ideas will you come up with? There are so many ways to adapt these little sewn booklets.

Freezing Fog

I love it when the weather is alliterative...

We had over a week of freezing fog, and it was so pretty. Luckily, we didn't have the slick roads that some areas experienced. Just the loveliness of powdered-sugar trees, and none of the mess of snow.

Of course, my camera never captures everything the eye picks up. There were towering trees clothed in white lace, but unfortunately, they were out of the range of my little grandma-camera lens.

By today it had warmed up into the 40s and we had rain again.

Sending warm thoughts to dear family members still shivering in the midwest.

World Peace with Fabric Balls...in my backyard

Received a cheery email from Nora, thanking me for the fabric ball tutorial. Hey, you're welcome! I'm glad my limited talents are useful to the world.

Nora enclosed a photo of her fabric ball.

She said, "Thank you so much for the fabric ball tutorial! I just finished a Cat in the Hat ball for a friend who is pregnant- she is having twins and I'm also doing "Thing One" and "Thing Two" onesies for them. :) I really appreciate the step-by-step instructions- it was fun!."

Haha! I've had moments making fabric balls when they kind of drive me nuts, so I'm glad that Nora is feeling so positive about the process.

It does feel good to get feedback from readers that the tutorial makes sense and helps them to create these unique toys for little ones. 

I checked with Nora to make sure it was ok to use her photo on the blog, and she graciously included a photo of her Thing One and Thing Two Onesies. 

And when I asked her where she's from, she revealed that she's from Portland! We're practically neighbors. That made me chuckle, since so many of the emails I receive about the fabric balls come from far-away places.

By the way...Nora's timing is perfect because March 2 is Dr. Seuss' birthday. If you have any young readers in your life, remember that it will be observed in many US schools on Friday, March 1, 2013. How do you celebrate the day? By reading, of course! There's more information here.

Need some books for a school's reading program? Click here for a program that sends free books (you pay 68¢ postage per book). The deadline to order is February 16.

P.S.  Nora's matching "Thing" onesies. Thank you for sharing! What a darling idea for twin kiddos on the way. I think I can predict some nicknames for these two. :)

Snowshoe Adventure

Liberty and I went on another adventure today. We snowshoed to lower Twin Lake, near Mount Hood. This is an "old favorite" hike - Mark and I were there in August with the Klines.

Liberty and I were thrilled with the snow. The marker near the trailhead showed it was 5' deep! It was crisp dry powder...and the thermometer said 17º! No matter, we bundled up and headed out.

 This was the maiden voyage for these snowshoes. Mark and I bought them at Costco last winter, but then never had an opportunity to try them out. They were great. So much better than the rental ones we've always used before. They never slipped off once, had great traction, and are very easy to adjust and maneuver. Liberty used Mark's snowshoes.

 A quick Kodak moment at the trail junction, where we leave the PCT and take the spur trail to lower Twin Lake. Only 1/2 mile left to go, and most of it will be downhill from here.

 The weather was gorgeous. In spite of the cold temperature, we weren't uncomfortable. It really helped that there was no wind except up on the ridge above the lake. The sky was so blue! Not a cloud anywhere (until we got back to the car...but who cares by then?).

 Heading down towards the lake, Bird Butte in the background.

 Here's lower Twin Lake, not too far from where we camped last August...

...another view of the lake, with Bird Butte in the background. And speaking of birds...

 ...here's the welcoming committee at our lunch spot. These gray jays obviously know where the hikers will be sitting for the lunch break!

 We were surprised to see even one of them, but there were actually several. We eventually counted 6. We also saw a huge black raven just before we left the lake, and some junkos (I think?) in the woods along the way, tap-tap-tapping the bark of trees.

 They weren't shy at all.

They landed on my hand several times to take bits of sandwich. Not much coaxing needed...these were hungry fellows!

 Can you tell we had a good time?

 I think I took about 40 photos with trees and snow and blue sky. It was all so amazingly beautiful. Given the likelihood of gray days in this part of Oregon, we were so very grateful to have scheduled our hike on a lovely lovely day. It's the only day we could both go this week...and it was perfect.

Back to the trailhead. That's the depth marker with the snow at 5' - funny to think that I'd be standing 5' in the air if all the snow suddenly melted! (Which maybe it will - it was all the way up to 31º by the time we got back to the car. A warming trend, for sure.)