I'd Probably Have Done The Same Thing

We got our first biggish snow on Saturday, so by Sunday the boys were dying to make a snowman.

With Jason gone on a deer hunt, and me being a Texan and not an engineer, our snowman wasn't anything to write home about. 

But we (JR, Reed, and me) got through it. (Kyle went inside after about 2 minutes.)

Here's our finished product, my kids chose to forgo arms and make him a hunter instead.  That big stick is supposed to be his gun. 

 But my children making a gun toting snowman in the middle of liberal Durango isn't even the best part of the story.

Being a snowman novice, I decided the best way to make-up his face was to use some of the ridiculous amounts of candy we have. 

Those eyes are big Halloween sized Tootsie Rolls.

As it was getting dark Sunday night, Kyle came to me and said he was going to play outside.

I said "Okay" knowing it was cold and he wouldn't stay out more than a few seconds.

A few minutes later I heard the front door shut, Kyle's feet coming up the stairs, and then as he approached me, the faint smell of chocolate wafted through the air.

I looked, and there was Kyle standing in front of me with some chocolate smeared on his cheek.

I asked him, "Did you get in the Halloween candy?"

But knew he hadn't since I hadn't heard the candy drawer rolling open or the pantry door shutting.

And then it came to me...

"Kyle, Did you go outside and eat the snowman's eyes?"

Yep.

This is probably one of those occasions when a teachable moment about how your shouldn't eat a snowman's face should have occurred, but I thought it was so hilarious I just laughed.

Our snowman looks like this now.

You'd Think It'd Be a Good Idea

We had our Cub Scout ice cream social last night.

You'd think May 18th would be a nice time of year to celebrate with ice cream.

You'd think.

But here's what it looked like outside as we left for our ice cream party.

Of course, the boys had no problem eating ice cream while it snowed outside.

JR with his best buddy Steven.  Truly two peas in a pod.

It continued to snow last night, so here's what greeted us this morning on May 19th.

May 19th!

This is what 6 more days of school looks like in Durango.

And if JR's Cub Scout campout gets cancelled this weekend due to snow, the wailing and gnashing of teeth you'll hear will be coming from our house.

10 Days Later

On May 1st we got a good 4 inches of snow.

I was not excited.

Then, yesterday, on the morning of May 11, I walked out on my front porch to this.

Grrrreat.

The day went on, the snow melted.

And then I got a call from Jason last night.

 One thing about Durango is it's really hard to get here.

Jason had been in Salt Lake City, but of course, had to change planes in Denver.

When he called me he was sitting on the runway in Denver.

It was snowing.

He posted this picture on Facebook

And he sat on the runway for 3 1/2 hours waiting for the plane to be de-iced.

And just in case you missed that...

sat on the runway for 3 1/2 hours

He made it home about 1:00 AM last night.

It took him 11 hours to get home from Salt Lake City.

He could have driven it in 7.

I Think They Call it a "Snow Shower"

If you're a Durango reader, you can skip today's edition...my pictures look just like yours.

If you're a Minnesota cousin, this is no where near as impressive as the snow pouring through the Metrodome roof...you're excused today, too.

If you're a Texan, feast your eyes on this ridiculousness...

We had no snow in our yard until yesterday!

 

It's Back

It wasn't much, but it showed up after all.

Much to our delight, it finally snowed.

I say 'wasn't much' and 'finally' like the Coloradoan I'm pretending to be.

(Instead of "Oh my goodness! It snowed!" like the native Texan I truly am,)

Last year we'd already had more snow than this. (Our first snow came before Halloween.)  But even though it's late, I'm thankful for the first snow since it sure makes the waking-up-JR-for-school-process easy.

It goes a little something like this:

Me: "JR, it snowed last night!"

And poof! He's out of bed like a rocket.

If you look at Reed's neck you can see Kyle's sporting his MJ one glove look again.

Here's What We Woke Up To

I have to say it's quite odd to wake up to the sound of the snowplow in the middle of June!

Happy Earth Day to Me

(And yes, you guessed right. I find Earth Day to be completely ridiculous.)

But this *cough, cough* holiday sure showed me. Here's what we woke up to this morning.

Obviously my excitement about a snow free yard was a little premature.

Nothing says spring in Colorado quite like a pair of snow covered flip-flops.

Wouldn't that make a great Country song title? "Snow Covered Flip-flops!"

The Definition of Awesome

Awesome*. It's snowing again.

*Awe-some [aw-suh m]
-adjective
and in this context is being used very sarcastically

To get the full meaning of the word "awesome" in this sentence, it might be helpful to replace it with, "Are you kidding me?! I'm totally sick of this mess! Isn't 200 inches (or whatever crazy number we've had) enough? I've got some super cute spring dresses that are dying to make an appearance and with this kind of weather it's just not going to happen."

Project Snowway

JR has been wanting to build a snowman since it started snowing back in October. But, according to Jason, the snow is just now finally wet enough to build one. (Who knew snow needed to be wet for snowmen? Okay, so a bunch of you actually knew that, but this Texan sure didn't.) Jason and the boys went to work building one on Saturday, and with them busy at construction, that left me in charge of accessorizing. And with the wound still fresh of having JR as the most underdressed child in the 1st grade, I figured I could at least somewhat redeem myself by having the best dressed snowman on the street.

JR with the finished product. (Doesn't it look fabulous?! I'm pretty sure I'm the new Rachel Zoe of snowman styling.)

All the workers. Reed says "no-me" for "snowman". Love it!

I learned another lesson this weekend. Snowmen don't look so good after a foot and a half of more snow fall on them.

Snow Okay

After checking the Weather Channel and seeing snow forecasted until Thursday I really felt like saying, "That's enough. Thanks, but I'm good."

But then today I found some forgotten snow pictures I'd taken on my phone, and I had a little change of heart.

Yes, Snow, you're quite pretty. Very pretty, in fact.
So, okay, you win.
Go ahead and do your thing.
But seriously, if I get stuck again, I might be having a few choice words with you!
JR in his new ski outfit. The zipper broke on his old coat, and this little ensemble was just too cool to pass up. He told us that a "big kid snowborder" even told him he liked his pants!


This was from Snowdown weekend. There were tons of balloons taking off as I was driving JR up to the mountain for Snowburners. This was the best I could get. Texting and driving is illegal in Colorado now, so I'm pretty sure taking pictures of hot air balloons while your driving would also fall under that category.


I literally made my children pose in a random parking lot because I thought the trees covered in snow were pretty. There was a guy walking to his car about that time who gave me a giggle. It's times like that I might as well have "Native Texan" written across my forehead. (Don't get me wrong, I love being a Texan, it's just when I do stuff like this people can figure it out before I open my mouth.)

Too Much of a Good Thing

Jason and I were super excited to go skiing yesterday. We just knew with 4 feet of new snow, the skiing would be incredible. Um, actually it was really hard. That's a lot of snow to get bogged down in, and my legs were screaming right away. We saw tons of snowboarders get covered under mounds of snow as they tried to land jumps. We ran into some friends that said they had to help free a skier and a snowboarder. The snowboarder was buried so deep they couldn't get him, but called for help. The mountain had to bring the bobcat dozer and dig him out! So, yeah, there's tons of powder up there. Jason and I are still in awe of the shear amounts of snow...we're just a couple of wide-eyed Texans for sure.

I'm Rescued!

Jason finally made it home about 10:15 this morning! He cranked up the snowblower right away, which made the babies happy since that meant they were now able to do their two favorite things:

play ball

and ride the tricycle

And like any good Texan, Jason's pretty proud of our front yard snowpile. I'm 5'2" so that gives you an idea of how much snow we're talking. (Although my boots and fuzzy hood are giving me a few inches.)

Another view: Babies on the front steps

And just for fun, let's compare the front steps for two "J" months.

Where's Waldo? (I mean Hunter)

We've gotten about 2 feet of snow in the last 24 hours. This is Hunter trying to go out to go to the bathroom this morning. Poor thing. I finally had to pick him up and carry him out to the street. The kids are home from school since it's a snowday. Oh, and did I mention Jason's not home? He was in Denver and all the flights were cancelled (except the first one out yesterday morning). He took the last flight out of Denver to Albuquerque and spent the night. He's trying to drive back today. I'll let you know how that goes. Without Jason here to work the snowblower (and being a Texan) I wasn't exactly sure what to do yesterday. I did go out and shovel the end of the driveway where the snowplow piled up about a foot of snow. As I was shoveling my mind went where it usually goes as I'm cleaning the bathrooms, "Hum, now how exactly did I get here?" In Beijing I would have had a team of young men with homemade brooms sweeping the snow away. (They also "sweep" the snow off the highways, no need for snowplows.)
JR started fussing at me as soon as he got off the bus about why I didn't bring the car to get him. I said, "JR! I can't even get it out of the driveway!" Our sweet neighbors came and snowblowed the driveway last night...before another foot piled up. At least that'll make it easier for Jason when he finally does get home.

Can You Guess What's Wrong?

So what's wrong with this picture?
The Texans are probably thinking,
"Well, JR's probably sweating in that big coat" being that it was in the 70's in Houston today. But you Snowbirds know. Um-hum, JR didn't put his pants back on after P.E. (You can see he's holding them in his arms). So on a day it snowed 3-4 inches this morning, my child gets off the bus in shorts! (Yes, I gasped when I saw him.) We also had to stop right there and put on his snow boots or he'd have never made it home. I'm learning so many things about this Colorado lifestyle. And one of those lessons: It's too hard to do P.E. in snow pants, so you need to wear shorts/other pants underneath the snow pants on P.E. days. Poor thing, he's like a walking boutique: hat, gloves, coat, shorts under his clothes, and tennis shoes in his backpack. (The Texas days of going to school in shorts and T-shirts sure were easier!)
We ran into some neighbors on our walk/sled home and stopped to talk. As we were talking I noticed JR's outfit and made sure to clarify, "I promise I didn't send him to school that way!"

And That's How We Roll

It was snowing like crazy this morning, but with the school bus right on time, I figured it was business as usual. And being the good Durangoan that I am, I headed out to Tiny Tots. And I would like to point out that everybody was carrying on business as usual. In fact, not one kid was absent from The Tots. But parking and unparking at The Tots was more than I could handle this morning. Not only did I slide back down out of the parking lot into the street, but I got stuck. Stuck so bad that 4 people had to help push, including a snowplow driver who was telling me which way to turn my wheels. Now I know I was blocking the road, so to get through they needed me to move, but they were all really very sweet and helpful. I finally got myself parked, but then I got stuck again trying to leave The Tots. Not as bad as the first time (I only needed one helper), but stuck all the same. The one thing all the helpers had in common: telling me, "make sure you've got it in 4-wheel drive". You should have seen their faces when I said I didn't have 4-wheel drive. I guess in an effort to make me feel better they did comment on how nice my all-terrain tires were.

I wasn't quite sure I was actually going to make it home. Our house is uphill from town. And when I say "uphill" I mean, town is at 6, 500 ft and we're at 7,500 ft. So yeah, it's uphill. There's a fine line between driving fast enough so you don't start sliding backwards and not driving so fast that you loose control. I'm still not sure what that actual speed is. Neither my Texas driving skills (pull over and get in the ditch if you see a tornado coming at you and wave to the television camera if a high-speed chase passes you by), nor my Beijing driving skills (sit in the back and chit-chat with your girlfriends as the driver drives you around) prepared me for this. After a fish-tail to end all others coming into our neighborhood, and then a slide after a prayer into our garage, I decided I was done for the day. So although the sun came out and the roads were cleared in time for the bus, this is how we rolled this afternoon.

And JR pulling the sled was for modeling purposes only. Carrying his backpack is enough exercise in his book!

I'm So Well Rested!

Such a wonderful morning I had! School was delayed for 2 hours and I made the executive decision not to tell JR before he went to bed last night. (If he had known, he would have been up at 6:00. Telling JR he gets to sleep in is a sure fire way to have him awake 5:58.) Thinking it was a normal school day, I heard the elephant thudding, I mean, pitter-patter of JR's feet at 7:42. 7:42...Ahhh. Sleeping in was beyond fabulous! The babies and I headed out to Tiny Tots and we were the only ones there. How come the native Texan was the only one at The Tots?! What's up with that, Coloradoans? Well, maybe it had to do with people's cars around town still looking like this. (And please forgive my poor picture taking skills...these were shots taken as I drove by.)

And before we go, let's check in with the Ingy Kitchen Counter Weather Station. Shall we have a little look-see?

Yep, that's what negative 2 looks like, Texas.

Yard Art Doesn't Really Work Here

We Texans thought we had gotten a lot of snow yesterday. Here's Jason using his brand new snow blower. You might recall when we were moving here Jason was told we needed a snow blower. His reply, "I have a leaf blower. Will that work?" We have learned that indeed, no, a leaf blower would never work.

What a difference a night makes. Here's Jason snow blowing about 7:30 this morning.

Jason had a little trouble trying to get to the office this morning.

It snowed so much, Durango cancelled school! (That very rarely happens.)

JR sledding with our across the street neighbors in their front yard.

More front yard sledding


I learned another good lesson last night. It's fine to decorate the front porch for Christmas.

But I now see why I was the only one with yard art.