Sunshine!

Since we live relatively near the Arctic Circle, (it is only 500 miles or so to the north of us! )we get a big fluctuation in sunlight between summer and winter! During the summer, I normally don't see DARK. We have about 19 1/2 hours of daylight at the summer solstice. When the sun goes down in the north/northwest, it doesn't go very far below the horizon, and comes up in the north/northeast. On the flip side of that, at the winter solstice we have about 5 1/2 hours of daylight. We also have some tall mountains around us. They do a great job of blocking the sun during the winter! Because of this, we don't get sun shinning in the house from the end of Nov until mid-Jan.

This picture is from Jan 20 at about 11am. The sun has finally risen high enough to peek thru the valley!!

This is so very exciting when it happens! I love winter! The snow, the Christmas lights on trees with snow all around, even driving in the snow! The cold, not so much! The bone-chilling cold that is! I love that the sun shines in-doors. So when that happens, it is worthy of photos!

So, when it does shine in the house again, it may only be for about 5 minutes, but it gains a minute or so each day.