Common sweet stuff

This is not uncommon at our house.  It makes me smile.  This particular incident was on Sunday afternoon.

I love piles of people cuddling together.  Especially these people.

More. Snow.

I posted just yesterday about the snow.  There was just so much of it I thought it was noteworthy.  And guess what!!?

IT'S SNOWING. Again.

Geez. Is this going to be a regular thing around here? :)  But I'm not here to complain.  I hope you didn't get the slightly-wrong impression yesterday that I don't like the snow.  It's lovely.  And it made for an incredibly fun day today.  Here's what we did:

On Halloween weekend last month, we went to a nice little tree farm in Cougar Gulch to pick out our Christmas tree. After what, to Brian, seemed like hours, we picked one and tagged it for our own.  Today, we went to cut 'er down! Yay!! We have NEVER cut down our own tree before. In fact, I don't think that in our entire marriage, we have every had a real Christmas tree.

Here we are all bundled up heading to our tree.

Found it.

 Dragging her down the hill.  I think our tree is a girl.  Isn't it nice of me to let Brian do all the work?

Ready to go.

On our way home with our tree, we noticed some friends down the street sledding on a little hill across from their house.  So, again leaving Brian to do all the work, the kids and I walked over and joined them.

So, I guess the snow isn't ALL bad.  And, unfortunatly when we got home, Brian was all done unloading and setting up the tree.  Darn.

I am really going to try to make the best of this living-in-a-super-snowy-place situation.  I plan on spending as much time in it as possible with my family.  All the more reasons to drink more hot chocolate.

Snow.

So, it's snowing right now.  Just as it has done for almost 5 days straight.  Yesterday was the only exception.  It only snowed for a couple of hours.  Every other day since Sunday, it has snowed ALL day.  An amazing fluffy, white fleecey-looking blanket is covering my neighborhood, my city, and the entire Idaho-Washington region.  It is beautiful.  What a way to spend Thanksgiving.

Tuesday night we got a freaking crazy blizzard.  Insane amounts of snow flying around.  The winds were so strong - I think 40-50 mph most of the night.  When we woke in the morning, it was quite a spectacle outside.  Some parts of our backyard had been cleared of snow from the wind.

(before the wind storm, there was about 6 inches of snow right there where you see the grass.)

The wind had picked up the snow and moved it wherever it pleased.  Lots of it ended up here:

This is on the other side of our backyard from the "grassy area" you saw in the first pic.  Those drifts are about 3 feet tall.

Lots of the flying snow also ended up here:

on our roof.

And a large amount ended up here:

This is my front porch.  I have not seen this touched by the weather even once in the last year.  Even in most storms, the porch stays dry.  It wasn't that lucky this time.  My poor pumpkins.  Brrr...

I have a love-hate relationship with snow.  I love it for it's beauty.  I hate it for most other reasons.  I'm afraid that I'm going to get to know it quite well living here.  We enjoyed a quiet, mostly snow-free winter last year.  I loved it.  Unfortunately, the outlook isn't as good this year.  It'll be a white one for sure.  Now I'm glad we forked over the buko-bucks for that snow blower a couple of months ago.

From my white wonderland I wish you a wonderful, warm holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Budding artists

I may have mentioned this before.  If so, you're going to read it again.  Here goes: Kimball is an amazing artist.  Truly.  He has loved drawing/painting/coloring/sculpting/building since he was very small.  I LOVE seeing what he brings home from school because it is always amazing.  Today I told him that they are going to have an art contest for the yearbook's cover.  I told him that the picture needed to have an eagle (their mascot), 10 years (it's the school's big 10 year anniversary), and the name of his school.  This is what he produced:

Isn't it amazing? (I know I keep using that word...amazing...but it seems to be the only one I can think of that really fits.)  Now let me remind you, he is 7.  I can't wait to see where he goes with this talent.  I hope he runs with it.

Noah and Sloan are also good artists.  Noah was not as interested when he was young, but has recently began showing some skill as well.  He wanted to draw an eagle like Kimball and this is what he came up with:

Holy cow, right? He is a mere 4 years old. Amazing.

And Sloan didn't draw an eagle, but is showing some promise with her scribbles:

I love these AMAZING little artists. (I had to throw it in one last time.) Their masterpieces bring me a lot of joy.

Paper bag

Last week when I was at the Kroc center for Zumba, I noticed a stack of brown paper bags next to a sign that read: Families Feeding Families.  I grabbed a bag to take a look at the label glued to the front. It was a shopping list of groceries.  A Kroc worker told me that I could sign up to bring a bag and bring it back filled with the groceries listed on the front.  I LOVED that idea, so I took one.  Bag number 47.

Tonight, for our FHE, we headed off to Fred Meyers with our empty brown paper grocery bag.  The kids had so much fun filling the bag with all the items on the list.  Kimball even got to be a super great helper by reading the list of items for us.

After the store, we took our filled brown paper bag to the Kroc center and dropped it off.  While this was nothing very significant, it really made me happy.  Mostly because of the whole idea of the bag.  We try to donate as much as we can during the holidays, but I'm never one to want to hand off a $20 bill and be done.  I love the idea of being handed an empty bag and physically going to the store as a family and filling it with things that people need.  I love that my kids were able to get involved with this in a big way.  How simple, but so cool!  I wish lots of other places did this as well. Maybe they do and I just haven't noticed.

And of course I'm not posting this as a pat-on-the back, job well-done blurb.  I really love how happy I feel after doing even the smallest bit of service and love that my kids got to experience it too.  And I'm especially thankful after small opportunities like this that I am blessed to come home to a full pantry and warm home when I know all around us are people who don't.  So blessed and very thankful.

How in the????

I sent Noah to play down in the basement while I got Sloan down for her nap yesterday.  When I finally had her asleep and in her room, I ran down to the basement to start a movie for Noah.  I had noticed that he was playing very quietly.  When I got down to the basement this is what I found:

This is not an unusual position for Noah to be found in.  It was unusual this time because he was...

ASLEEP!!

Yep.  I leaned in closer because he didn't sit up right when I came down the stairs.  Sawing logs.  How in the world is this a comfortable enough position to relax him to sleep? I quietly ran upstairs to grab the camera and snapped the picture just in time.  Right when I did, he sat up.

Look at that sweet sleepy face. He even has evidence of his nap impressed into his forehead.

He tried to deny being asleep.  Too bad your mom is quick with the camera, Noah! :)

The Obvious Halloween Post

You knew it was coming, didn't you? Here is the obvious unavoidable Halloween post for 2010.  Good thing I've got lots of pictures full of delectible eye candy for you, or else these holiday posts would start becoming mundane.  Enjoy!!

Our Pre-Halloween visit to the Pumpkin Patch.  Here's my crew on the hayride looking oh-so-cool.

The goods. And 2 kids with their eyes closed.

LOVE this picture.  Except for that darn guy standing off to the right. Didn't he know he was in the way of a beautiful masterpiece?

Here's what became of those pumpkins we collected.  Of course I forgot to get the camera out during the actual carving.



And now the moment you've all been waiting for:

COSTUME TIME!!

The munchkins.  Butterfly Sloan, Noahbot and Red Ranger Kimball.

Poor Kimball got stuck wearing the costume he wore last year. Lucky for him he was surrounded by an entirely new audience (last year we were in Boise for Halloween).  Noah makes an incredibly cute robot - and WON the kids costume contest at our ward Halloween Carnival!  I'm glad the robot costume survived the move from Boise.  It's getting packed up so Sloan can wear it next.  It was a hit with both boys.  And Sloan in her pink and purple butterfly.  She even got to wear glitter on her cheeks to really girl it up.

And who do you think won the couples costume contest???

This young smokin' hot pair!

You WISH you could be as cool as us.

And we were SO excited to have Grammie from Boise up spending Halloween with us.  She even dressed up as a witch - green makeup and worty nose and all!  Too bad I'm a big jerk and forgot to take her picture for all the grandkids to see.  Can't you just picture it though?  I'll do some investigating and see if anyone in the ward captured her beauty while they were snapping pictures.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!