::are you ready for this?::

Check it out.
So there was yesterday morning:

And yesterday afternoon:


And do you want to see how it looked first thing this morning? Here you go:

WOW!
It snowed all night and now the snow is so deep here. It's amazing. And it's funny because this one of the biggest snows we've experienced, even after living out east and in the midwest. And it was the least hyped by the media! If this snow had been heading towards anywhere else we lived people would be mobbing the grocery store to get supplies and getting ready to hole up for weeks. Funny stuff.

Kris left this morning in the Land Rover because he had a dental surgery scheduled at the hospital at 7AM. He barely made it out of the driveway. The patient didn't make it to the hospital of course. By the time he got done calling all of our patients for the day and rescheduling them, he came home and all the freeways and highways were being closed.
We'll see if we make it out of here this afternoon--we're supposed to be going to Albuquerque for the NM Bowl. We were going to stay the night and go to the game tomorrow. We'll see!

Here are some more snowy scenes for you.
The french doors in the dining room. Poor Sultan can't make it out to use the facilites:

Our high windows in the living room, all plastered:

Max, enjoying his snow day home from school:

Sultan, bummed because Kris left in the Land Rover without him:

The view from the front door:



And the view out the back door onto our weird patio:

I think these little snow dunes are my favorite.

A fun view from Max's bathroom window:


Days like this make me truly appreciate a warm cozy house and other temporal blessings. It's also nice to be the bosses instead of being bossed around--making the call on whether this should be a snow day or not was nice instead of just being forced to go in whether we wanted to or not!
Happy snow day. Looks like it may still be white by Christmas!

::winter wallop::

I just had to laugh when I saw the title that the news channels were giving to our big storm this weekend. "Winter wallop"? Quite the alliteration.
But it was a big storm, and pretty amazing. It started snowing at about 9PM last night, and it just started slow and subtly. By the time we woke up in the morning at about 8AM there was about a two foot drift up against our sliding glass door. There was lots of fast wind last night, so we had some interesting snow distribution.

Church was cancelled last night, so we were able to be pleased by the snow instead of bummed because we were going to have to go out in it.
Kris and Max went out to start shoveling.

Check out the cars!!


Check out what was hanging off the roof. It kind of feels like we're living in a canyon or a cave--something that nature has carved over time.

And check out the drifts on the neighbors houses. I think they're super interesting looking, especially how the chimney in the house on the left has a blank circle all around it. They really look like frosted gingerbread houses, don't they?

Sul didn't like it. I think he liked it at first, but when he realized how deep it was he was not excited anymore. Here's what happened when I called him to come up on the deck so I could take a picture of him (from inside of course).




He had to build up extreme velocity just to get over the snow, and that's after Max had already blazed a trail for him.
He was very bummed when I didn't let him in.


Kris thought that the snow on the trampoline looked like it was pretty shallow, so I guess he threw Max onto it headfirst. And I guess he disappeared into the depths. Turns out there was tons of snow on the tramp. It just looked shallow because the mat was all bowed low, nearly touching the ground. Good thing Max is a good sport.

Since Max was dying to sled, and there was no way the cars were leaving the driveway, Kris set up a little sledding situation on the back deck.

He made some steps out of the recycling bins, and some sort of ramp off the side.

Recipe for disaster unless dad is holding the sled tight. He survived though, luckily.



Weeeeeeeee.......

Then Max got freezing and came in and poor Kris stayed out for another hour and a half just shoveling shoveling and shoveling. Good thing he's been working out. I think this will count for his workout for the next week.
And Max warmed up.

Yay for hot chocolate and snow and cheery mugs and lazy days. And extra yay for warm houses that keep us dry. I like those.

::snow day::

This is the second sunday in a row in which our church services have been canceled because of snow fall.

The part of town that our meeting house is in has very narrow roads that don't get plowed well at all. And our largest parking lot (which is still really tiny) is all gravel, which makes it tough to plow or shovel.
Truthfully, none of the city seems to get plowed very well, which makes driving anywhere in a show storm pretty treacherous.

So we're hanging out together. Looking at photos, watching a little Rogers & Hammerstein and staying warm.
Here's a picture of the fire house, as per my dad's request on my last snowy post.

Stay warm everybody!

::today::

This is the view from our house this morning. (and yes, that is a gas station--weird I know, but at least I can keep tabs on gas prices easier this way)
We're supposed to be getting four to eight inches today. That could be nice since ALL our crazy snow from before christmas melted in the rain and 60 degree weather we had last sunday.

I'm going to see if I can get a post up about christmas today. It's almost getting too late to do it, and of course there's so much to say. I'm about ready to do a bullet list like Megs, but I have some fun pictures that I feel a compulsion to share (as usual).

So we'll see how much I get done, and how much snow we get. Kris is in the operating room today working on some big cases.

(this is actually from last week, on christmas eve)
He has the day off tomorrow and then after this weekend we have to go back to real life. AHHH. Not sure I can do that. It sounds a little scary.

::even more snow::

On our snowday Kris Max and Sultan headed off to the dog park to expend some excess energy. I didn't go. It was much nicer for me that way.

But Kris came back with some awfully good photos on his phone.

The snow was really deep. I had a hard time walking in it, I can't imagine how tough it would be at Max's height.
Luckily Sultan's made for stuff like this.

He's in his element.

They made a ginormous snowman.

The kind of snowman you always dream of making as a kid.



And since they were at the dog park Max requested a special chain link picture. Evidently he liked the effect of the last one.

Hilarious.

Max and I made cookies yesterday, and we thought in honor of the giant man of snow left at the park, we'd make some special dog park snowmen.

Now that's appetizing, right?

::so much snow::

I think we ended up getting around 10 inches, probably more.

This photo was taken saturday morning--it snowed pretty much the rest of the day saturday, then most of sunday as well.
We had a church snowday on sunday. The streets around our building aren't great, so with all the snow the bishop decided to just cancel. The snow was so beautiful, especially since we didn't have to go anywhere in it unless we wanted to.

On saturday morning we went on a sledding outing with friends from Kris's work. It was so snowy, and it was FREEZING. One of the dentists had told the guys about a great hill, so we headed out that direction. Of course it was really hard to find. But we finally got there. The hill was huge, and super snowy. It was really tough to get up, and none of the little kids could really do it on their own, so we had to carry them. My feet started to freeze.

My friend Bonnie took a pretty funny video of Max and her son Vincent going down the hill together. Vincent I think is about a year and a half younger than Max, and this was most likely his first time sledding. He didn't like this trip much. Check it out. You can kind of see how huge the hill is on this video. And it's hilarious how the dads run (and sled) to the rescue as soon as the boys wipe out.

(Thanks Bonnie!)

I don't have any photos of the sledding because I didn't want to haul my big camera out on the hike up the hill. But I do have a few from when we got back to the car. Max only ended up going down the hill about four times. That was about as many times Kris could carry him back up the hill without getting a hernia or something.
The last time Max decided he wanted to go on his own--on his stomach no less. The snow was super powdery, and so as he went his sled kept kicking tons of snow right in his face. By the time he got to the bottom he was like a snowman, and he was NOT happy. That was the last run for us and we headed back to the car.
Where of course I had the camera and took some pictures.
The boys made some snow angels.




Max really didn't want me taking his picture. He said he had a "red face", which I think was in reference to his crying. Anyway, he was cool with throwing snowballs, but when I tried to take a picture of just him being cute he freaked out.



Making snowballs!



It was so powdery that it was tough to throw. And Max isn't that great of a thrower anyway.






And here's the freakout:

I mean, his face was definitely red. From the cold and the crying. But it was just hilarious how self conscious he was about it.
I had to sneak a photo of him in the car, I couldn't help it.

Sledding is fun, as long as my feet don't get too cold.