Why is it that I can never keep my kids' mittens together? They are like socks, almost worse, because where we live, you can at least shove your feet into your warm boots without socks if you absolutely had to. But no mittens on your fingers and they will definitely get frost bite.

Owen had one pair of nice thinsulate mittens. The kind made for serious cold weather. And then he blew a hole through the thumb so large that it was not possible for me to sew it back up. So I went to Target, no luck, Walmart-nada, I then went to Oshkosh, Carters, and Old Navy. I even went to thrift stores thinking that I would find some there. Nothing. Not a single store had warm mittens. They did, however, have plenty of those silly, thin gloves that couldn't keep your hands warm to save your life.

Finally, on the way up to my parents' house, we stopped at Mills Fleet Farm, which can only be described as the ultimate man store (think hunting, fishing and car stuff), and lo and behold, we managed to find a warm pair of mittens. Price $9.00- that's a lot of money in my opinion for a pair of mittens- but he needed them.

This was two weeks ago. Yesterday, Chris took the kids ice fishing. This morning, I discovered that Owen burnt a hole through one of his new gloves on the heater in the ice house. Chris said he was watching him- clearly not enough. That store where we finally found the mittens? It is two hours away. Oh, and we have several months of winter left.