Winter Weather

We've had a long winter!  It has been super cold and hazy and we've gotten loads of snow.  Our biggest one day total was on January 29th with 20 inches of the white stuff falling in one day. 

The kids have had lots of chances to play in the snow.  Abby is usually more excited about going out than the other kids and she has spent lots of hours outside all by herself.  Luckily, she is self-entertaining and doesn’t get bored even if no one else wants to play.  Every time I go out to check on her, she’ll tell me “I’m having snow much fun!”  She thinks she is hilarious with that little play on words. 

 

The other kids have gotten in their fair share of play time too.  We had enough snow to make our own little backyard sledding hill.  The kids and their friends had a great time playing on it.  I even got in on the action for a few minutes.

Nate told the kids that he would build them a snow cave.  His first attempt didn’t go so well.  He had it all hollowed out and was just getting out when the whole thing collapsed on his head.  Never one to give up easily, he made another big pile of snow and tried again a couple of weeks later.  The resulting cave was much sturdier and big enough for the whole family.  Phew.  Emily made her own little snow cave.  It was really more of a tunnel that was just long enough for her to back into, but she was excited about it.

Two other funny Nate stories: Nate shaved off his winter beard in stages.  He went from full beard, to goatee with sideburns, to just a goatee, to a moustache with a soul patch, and finally got down to just a moustache.  I was not a fan and tried to get him to shave it off.  Instead, he went out to shovel sporting his Magnum P.I. look.  I cracked up laughing every time I looked at him.

Second story: We drove up to Bear Lake last weekend for Katie Hadley’s (Ballingham’s) funeral.  There was a winter storm warning and we were a little worried about making it through both canyons.  Nate was apparently more worried than I was.  When we got home, he started unloading the van.  Before we set out he had packed a bunch of supplies in case we got caught in a blizzard.  He had a snow shovel, winter coats, snow boots, gloves, a quilt, extra water, and some food (4 cans of ravioli, 2 bags of chex mix, and a bag of peanut m&ms).  “You always hear about people getting stranded in their cars in snowstorms.  I didn’t want us to be unprepared.”  Once a boy scout, always a boy scout.