I Like This Photo

Giant snowman + freezing cold + soaked + fun = happy!

 

Biggest Snowman in the World

Here's our house, covered in snow, with two big ol' snowmen in front. We all took advantage of the snow (the most we have ever seen here in the 15 years since we moved from Maine) and played outside for hours. 

Here is our French snowman with our French boy.  
 

Here is the American snowman with Mom, Dad, and Troy. 
 

The Biggest Snowman EVER! with Quentin, Troy, and Katie. 
 

Snow Fight!

This morning we had an epic snowball fight. 

The dogs had a great time plowing through the snow while Troy, Dad, Quentin, and I dumped snow on each other. 

 

Dad and Troy double-teamed me when I first came out, but the Quentin came out and we attacked them back! 

 

Here's Dad playing with the girls. 
 

Then we built snow forts in the 15 inches of snow and had another snowball fight. I'm in the pink hat, straddling our fort as I reinforced it. 

The dogs kept running through our piles of snowballs! 

Mom was official war photographer. She was also standing in the middle so we knew where we couldn't cross. The only rules were not crossing the middle, and no kicking down the other group's fort. 

Quentin says Retreat! Katie and Troy are totally winning! Gary, retreat! (He actually said it in French. And at the same time I was hollering at Troy to retreat! There's snow down my back! Agh!

Dad arming up!

Me . . . I'm not sure what I'm doing. 

Troy and Kali think that the snow is cold but fun!

Frustrated at his sister's cheating but laughing too. 

Run away! Be very afraid. Very afraid indeed. 

Belated Post: Snow 2007

Snow is pretty rare at our house, so when it does come here we usually have a lot of fun in it! I was looking through my pictures and found these!

Troy and I in a fierce snowball fight.  (I won, of course). 


I can't imagine why I've kept these pictures private, can you? I would love for everyone to comment on my fashion sense. (The beanie is from my uncle Scott from our cruise to Alaska, the gloves are from a garage sale, and I have no memories of that sweatshirt). (No, really, absolutely no idea where that sweatshirt came from. We collect random sweatshirts at the Symington household). 


This is our fabulous snowwoman. Snow-woman? Snow-she? Princess Snow? The next morning she was Princess Puddle. 

The Awesomness of Snow+Cars=Nearly Badness

About twelve hours after I wrote my glowing snow post, I left Nick's in a hurry, as we had been watching Star Trek until we noticed that holy god it's SNOWING! And it's STICKING on the ROAD! Crap! NeedtogohomeNOW!

So I was driving slowly home in the SUV in automatic, so that it would switch to four wheel drive if necessary. So of course it had to become necessary, right?

I was driving slowly around a curve, with a ditch and trees on my right and a dirt cliff on the left, when my car suddenly started sliding! It was turning to the left, and my car was sliding on the snow and my brakes weren't working, so I panicked and over corrected by turning too sharply to the right, and started sliding towards the trees. Even though you think it wouldn't, my mind was clear and time seemed to be slowing down. I whipped the wheel back to the left and kept the pressure on the brake and the car slowly stopped sliding, leaving me facing the tall cliff on the other side of the road, blocking both lanes. I gently accelerated and went into my own lane, then stopped again and went into low four wheel drive and drove about 15mph the rest of the way home.
Once safely home, I waited until I was upstairs and on the phone to Nick to get the shaky adrenaline rush. But it went away, and I was fine! Just left with a healthy respect for snow.

White Christmas

This is the first Christmas in California that we have had snow flurries outside while we were decorating our tree! It's sort of sticking to the ground now, and it's great! I dumped sleet down Troy and Dad's shirts too! Hehehehehe.

Nick came over and helped us decorate the tree, and it was a lot of fun--he mostly played with kittens while we held up ornaments and said "Awwwwww this is Troy at five years old!" or "This is Mom's. Or.....maybe it's not. Huh. Who has the weird artichoke ornament?!" And we drank eggnog and were happy.

Tonight we had our family birthday dinner, as Troy and I are only one day apart--my baby brother turns seventeen tomorrow!!! (And Nick turns twenty years old six days after I do) (I'm dating a younger man!) Anyway we had delicious steak, potatoes, salad and bread. (Go Mom for cooking it all). And then amazing chocolate cake!

Here's hoping for snow snow snow!