Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Last night before we went to bed, we had heard on the news that it was going to snow overnight.  I thought it was just going to be a light dusting, but when I woke up and looked out the window, I thought I was in Utah b/c of all the snow.  Dad stopped by after seminary to say hi like he usually does.  But, since we didn’t have work today b/c of the bad roads, we decided to spend the day over at Mom & Dad’s.  We got cleaned up and the headed to WalMart to stock up on movies at Red Box and get a few groceries.  Autumn insisted on sitting in the cart w/ all the groceries.

I loved this picture of the snow.  These are the hooks where we usually hang our swimsuits and towels to dry during the summer.  Now they’re covered in snow.

We had waffles for breakfast and then watched Up, which is a cute movie.  I only got to see 1/2 of it b/c I had to go make some calls for work since we didn’t go into the office today.  Then we watched Surrogate, which was a good action-packed movie.  Liz & Liberty came over and watched it w/ us and then after it was over we got dressed to go outside and play in the snow.  We got out the snowsuits that Dad uses when he goes up to Utah to ski w/ his brother.  Too bad they were all a size small.  I couldn’t even get them up over my hips!  But, they fit Autumn just great when we rolled up the pants and wrapped the shoulder straps around her torso.  She looks like the little kid on The Christmas Story. LOL!

Nate & Liz got in a snowball fight and Nate hit her right in the face, and as you can tell, some went behind her glasses and got stuck!  She was a good sport about it.

We went out to our back hill where we tried to make our own slip’n’slide a year and a half ago (it didn’t work too well).  But, the hill was great for sledding.  Liz & Liberty brought some foam mats you use to lounge on in the pool.  As you can tell from this picture of Liz tumbling down the hill, the mats didn’t work too well.  But we had fun laughing at them trying.

Nate was able to find an old sled we had in the shop out back.  It ended up working a lot better than the pool mats.

After a few sledding attempts, we went up to the back hill to make a snowman.  The snow was perfect for making snowmen.  It was nice big flakes and stuck together really well, which is unusual for Texas.  Usually we get slushy and wet snow, but we were able to make huge snowballs.

Because the snow was so thick, it took Nate & Dad & Liberty all working together to put each part of the snowman together.  But, we ended up w/ a big 8 foot tall snowman.  We used rocks for eyes, a banana for the nose (we didn’t have any carrots), a red sponge for the mouth, a cut up t-shirt that was tied together for the scarf, and tree branches for the arms.  Nate had to stand up on a ladder to get the hat and eyes on.

Here we are w/ our sweet snowman.  I have a towel wrapped around me b/c I had to keep my camera covered so it wouldn’t get wet from all the snowflakes that were falling.  I love being out in the country, b/c as we were building our snowman, people would honk or wave at us as they drove by…so friendly.

After we finished our snowman, it was back to sledding. I wanted to try it, but was afraid I would tip over like I had seen Liz do several times, so I made Nate ride down w/ me.  As soon as we started picking up speed down the hill I started yelling, “Make it stop! Make it stop!”  But, despite the scared look on my face, it really was a lot of fun and I climbed back up to the top of the hill to go again.

I’m glad I didn’t try using the pink pool mats, b/c as you can see from this picture, Liberty got turned around backwards somehow and Liz biffed it right on her face.  But that didn’t deter her and she went back for more (but on the sled the next time).

Autumn didn’t want to sled down, but Dad helped (read forced) her to go down once w/ him and she loved it after that.  I thought these pictures of the two of them together were so cute.

We were all done and about ready to go in when Nate decided to try sledding down the hill on the shovel we had used to make the snowman.  I thought for sure he was going to fall and split his chin open, but he did pretty good.

After Nate tried it w/out getting hurt, Liberty had to try it out.  It must be a guy thing, but Liberty did great at it.

It was such a fun day of playing out in the snow.  They kept saying on the news that this is the most snow Texas has seen in 30 years.  We enjoyed being out in it.

After all the snow fun, we were cold and ready for something warm.  We had gotten a big 16” pizza at WalMart when we were there this morning, so we threw that in the oven and had that fun lunch.  It was super good.  After eating, we settled in under some blankets with our mugs of friendship tea to watch another movie.  We watched The Soloist, which is the movie w/ Jamie Fox and Robert Downing, Jr.  Jamie Fox plays a homeless man that went to Julliard but then got schizophrenia and can play the cello exceptionally well.  It was an EXCELLENT movie.

After the movie, Dad took Nick to work and stopped to get more movies and take back the ones we had watched.  I wanted to see how much snow had accumulated, so I went out w/ a measuring tape and we had almost 3 inches of snow.  And it kept coming down and snowing all afternoon.

Autumn hadn’t had enough of playing in the snow, so she brought me her snow pants and coat and asked to go outside again.  I didn’t have any gloves for her, but that didn’t stop her from making snowballs and throwing them at me.  But, I was a party pooper and didn’t want her to hit the camera on accident, so I told her to go throw her snowballs in the pool.  She would have stayed outside all day if I would have let her, but I was getting cold and made her come back inside w/ me after about 15 minutes.

When Dad finally got back from taking Nick to work and stopping by the store, he had a surprise for Autumn.  He got a cake, and Autumn kept saying, “it’s my birthday cake.”  Since she was so excited about it, we put a candle on it and let her blow it out while singing, “Happy snow day to you, happy snow day to you, happy snow day dear Autumn, happy snow day to you.”   Can you say SPOILED ROTTEN?

At about 6:30 Mary called and said the power was out over at their house and they wanted to know if they could come over to watch Survivor.  We told them sure, so they showed up at 7:00.  Autumn saw Mary’s long pretty hair and got so excited.  She ran in Mom’s bathroom and came back out w/ a brush.  She thought she had died and gone to heaven when Mary let Autumn brush her hair.

Autumn decided that Curt needed a turn, too, so she took off his hat and brushed his hair.  While we were watching Survivor, the TV went out.  We all let out a scream and Dad came in the room just laughing hysterically.  He had gone and turned off the breaker to freak us out…little stinker!  It took 5 minutes for the satellite to reload and come back up.  We got back to watching Survivor when the lights and the TV went out.  But, Dad was sitting watching it w/ us, so we knew it wasn’t him.  The power had actually gone out this time.  Curt is a Survivor addict and didn’t want to miss any of it so they all packed up and left to go watch it at another friend’s house that had power.

We just lit candles and waited for it to come back on.  Luckily we only had to wait about 45 minutes.  When the power did come back on, we watched one of the movies Dad had gotten.  It was called Taking Chance starring Kevin Bacon.  He is a Marine that volunteers to escort home a solider that died.  It is an incredibly touching movie.  I highly recommend it to anyone.  I had tears in my eyes quite a few times.  It is so moving and patriotic and wonderful.  It made me appreciate so much more the men and women that sacrifice themselves for our freedoms.