Snow fun 2011

We had snow much fun playing outside in the snow. Aunt Carrie and gang came over and the neighbors came out so we could play together. The kids got to sled and we all loved the snowball fight.

It is simply amazing to me that Lucas can get this much on him.

Here is T with Marissa, the neighbor girl and her friend.

Sledding and snowboarding down the hill on the side of the neighbors house. The snow was pretty blown over here but it had a nice frozen top to it and was super slick.

Hangin out in the igloo.

Don't focus on my back side, look at that nice clean driveway.

As soon as it warms up I will have some more picture of the snow fun. Until then I can only show you pictures of us under blankets or in front of the fireplace eating soup and playing games.

Come on 0, I'm tired of the - sign in front of my temperatures in the morning!!

Fun in the snow

Aunt Carrie came over!! Yeah, we got to leave the walls of our house and play outside with some true snow warriors.

Look at Aunt Carrie trying to get some good photos.....

I am honestly starting to think Jeremy has a shoveling addiction. Who on earth shovels the street two days in a row?

Yep, this was the beginning of the snow fight. Good ol Uncle Jeremy got it going and everyone else fell right behind. I had to put the camera away but this snow is dry, dry, dry so no awesome snowballs for any of us.

After I put the camera away I forgot to get it back out for sledding but I busted out the old fashion slice your leg open sled for Hunter to use going down the side of the house. Addi had given up and gone inside by then so we had some fun on some ice covered drifts. I was glad to see the old fashion sled went just about as far as the new slick bottom one.

Tonight the cold is coming so it should firm up our tunnels but I am not sure it will be warm enough for us to get out in for another day or so. More fun for the weekend!!

Snow fun

A snow dome is only fitting after a blizzard. We had two nice piles of snow going so we decided to make one tunnel and one igloo.

Yes, this is me working on the igloo with Luke. I was worried that it would cave in so I tested it myself and was nicely shocked when the snow was packed very tightly. The igloo was later turned into a tunnel because the kids decided it was more fun then just sitting in the snow.

Here they are playing in the snow.

Luke dug a hole to find the grass. He wanted to see just how deep he had to go. He was a bit afraid of digging into the ground he said but I told him have no fear of breaking dirt this week.

Addi was afraid to stand in the hole, thinking she would be buried. It was not that deep but was pretty close to her chest!!!!

I sent Luke down to the end of the street to see if Lucy Webb was plowed. I figured we would ask Aunt Carrie and gang over to play in the snow but I wanted to make sure the main roads were plowed. They were so we asked and yippee, they were kind enough to come on over!!

Blizzard 2011

Before I even begin I would like to say in all of my mind I never would of thought I would post two separate blogs a year apart about a blizzard.

Okay so the blizzard of 2011 was really only an issue for me from the view of my front window. I did not even try to get out Tuesday and Wednesday will be the same. Our office is closed on Wednesday so sledding will be our only reason to depart the beauty of our home.

Here are some radar pictures from early Tuesday of the snow. At 6am were were not fully in the heavy snow band, that is what pink means, heavy snow and white is thunder snow or increased bands which means you get 2 to 2.5 inches and hour. We had those later in day when I began to wonder if Jeremy would make it home.

This is what they were predicting for totals I would guess they were pretty close. According to the best measurements we can get here puts us at 14 inches. It is so hard to figure out for sure because of all the wind but we will go with 14.

Now lets just say Luke's measurements taken every other hour yesterday were a bit off, maybe an inch or two. That is still a foot of snow!! That makes me very happy!

These pictures are after our first shoveling of the driveway. We could not even keep up with the snow falling so we eventually gave up.

Jeremy went out a couple hours later and the rest of us joined him because of guilt shortly after.

Luke was a very good shoveler.

This is our first shovel. The snow was very fluffy but deep, so deep!

Addi was sleeping during our first shovel so she came out the second time and could not believe the amount of snow everywhere. she was especially impressed with the snow on the table at the entry way.

What would you do after all the snow is piled along the side of the drive way. Yeah, me too. Go for a climb.

At first they tried to slide down but decided it was way cooler just to use your own body.

At the top of the world, or at least snow pile.

Snow surfing.

And the slide down.

Today we are going to work on building a snow fort. I think if we spray the piles down with some water they will harder up on the outside and we can tunnel through on the inside. Hopefully, I will have some pictures later. I am a bit worried about the wind chill. That is part 3 of the wonderful storm. Part 1 was freezing drizzle on Monday. Part 2 snow and wind (blizzard) on Tuesday and Part 3 Wednesday and Thursday severe cold and windchill.

I will take Part 2 any day but the others only make me grouchy!!

Jeremy and Luke just came in from one last shovel to totally clear the driveway of all the drifts from last night. We have a clear drive way, a street full of snow and I am certain we are not getting mail today. The mail van thing-y got stuck when she turned on our street and finally got turned around enough to leave. No mail means no bills so I'm good here! The City classifies us as a level 4 road because we are a dead end or cul-de-sac. Actually our road is both so we are most likely the bottom of level 4. They sent out notification that level 4 roads should be plowed later this evening. Good thing we can sled in our own yard because there is no getting out of here!

Honeybell's are here

Honeybell's have finally made it to Raymore. They were a Christmas gift from Amy. These are the best juiciest oranges I know. They box even comes with a special stray to drink right out of the orange. De-lish!!

Addi was sort of creeped out by the idea of drinking out of them. She really just wanted the orange orange she would say.



Luke tried to peel an orange for Addi and discovered how juicy they are.

Addi agreed to drink the juice finally to get the orange orange part out after seeing how juicy they were.

Luke would drink the entire box if you would let him. He can't believe we can't get more of them in the store and is afraid we will run out and have to go back to that orange juice in a cartoon soon.

Thank you Amy for the wonderful gift. We love Honeybell's!

Poor Guy

A couple weeks ago PAPA came to town and stayed at Great Wolf Lodge. We had a full weekend of baseball pancake breakfast, indoor baseball before Lucas could enjoy some GWL so Aunt Carrie was nice enough to take Addi Jo with her. She had a wonderful time in the water. After baseball I switched Luke for the little people.

I knew leaving GWL I was walking away a winner. I will take two kids that have been swimming all day over one all day swimmer and a new arrival any time. I was practically floating on air getting them into their booster seats. Have a great night Aunt Carrie, see ya suckers!!! Jeremy is in Texas, I have two tired kids one easy Saturday night.
Famous last words I tell ya, famous last words. NO SLEEP all the way home. It took 45 minutes to get home and they did not stop talking. After 20 minutes I was glad because I figured that nap would do me in. Hunter figured out how to drive Addi nuts and whenever she wanted to ask him a question he would say, we will talk about it later. I thought the girl was going to go insane. Put her on hold, oh she almost pulled her own hair out.
Okay, so we get home drops in our chlorine eyes, pj's on and ready for a good nights sleep. Ahhh, what is this? Kids running around the house. What on earth is going on. Did someone give you sugar, is this a mean trick? It was 9:30 before these little people fell asleep. I can say though it was a good hard sleep when they fell though.

Sunday we went to church and then played for a bit before nap time and going over to Aunt Carrie's for some football games.

Addi decided to dress Hunter up. Poor guy had to put on a dress just before these pictures. He did get that off rather quickly I have to admit!

He did love the cool rays


Seriously, could Addi be any prouder of her creation ?



Oh what the heck, all for the attention of a girl

ADDI SCHOOL PICTURES

Snow Day

Today was our first snow day of 2011. This was also the first time I had to try to drive to the airport for work. Regarding that topic, it will also be the last time I go to the office when it is snowing. What a freaking mess!! I can work from home and if I did not have to get one very important thing done I would have turned around. Okay, on with something of more interest.

We left early and when we all got home we started in on the driveway. This is a very light snow, which is good when you are a shoveler. We have some good helpers around here so it went really fast.

This is really the first time that Addi has been helpful with a shovel with any significant benefit. I have to say she still has a way to go because she shoveled her little row right off the driveway, across the street, and down the cul-de-sac. When you tell her to clear snow you better mean it!!

After the driveway is clear we are good to go on sledding!!! We love to sled, or at least in theory we love to sled. Addi does great until that first push. Then she is all screams, and not the joyful type. Addi loves to make snow angels but she hates to do it when it is still snowing because it gets in her face. It is to snow all evening and into the night so hopefully we can make some angels tomorrow.

oHHHH, KCMO just cancelled for tomorrow and so did Lee's Summit? Could we get two snow days in a row? I so hope for Luke's sake. That means he can play in the snow whenever he wants and how ever long he wants tomorrow .....I am so crossing my fingers

Indoor baseball

Are you thinking about baseball?

Luke had his first indoor baseball game Saturday afternoon. They play at an indoor facility in Lee's Summit. It really is not set up for people to watch, you have to stand or sit on the cold ground for 90 minutes but the boys have an awesome time.

Luke is going to play for the Rascals this year. This will be their first year as a competitive team. This will also be the first year for boy pitch. Yep, that means the boys have to pitch the ball, no t, no machine, no coach. It could be scary folks!
Just about every boy needs to be able to pitch. Luke is working on his throwing and being a catch will help him out they say. We have a couple of boys that are pretty good so that should help. No one is expecting an amazing season here but the boys are excited and that is the key to getting anything going.

It is hard to get pictures in the indoor facility, for some reason they did not install good picture taking lighting. I am so going to have to talk to someone about that. Hum, maybe Frank White because he was there talking to all the boys and our coaches Saturday. What an awesome guy!! If the lighting was not enough of a problem I also have to deal with a chain link fence and a black netting system. I hate to complain because we all know I would really bitch if I got hit by a ball while I was standing around.




As the season moves along, and outdoors, I will keep you updated as to the schedule for league games and tournaments. Baseball this year will go from January to September and the football starts in August. Have I mentioned lately how glad I am we are sitting out wresting this season?

Hunting

Jeremy and Lucas have been lucky enough to hunt a lot this season. This season Jeremy has shot more banded geese then every before in his whole hunting life as Luke likes to say. The winter has been mild until this last weekend so Luke has been able to go quiet a bit in the blind. Saturday Jeremy brought home another banded goose!

Addi decided to check it out, I mean who does not love a goose with a little jewelry on it?



This is one happy hunter!

Happy New Yar 2011

We hope you are having a wonderful start to the New Year. I am not so big on resolutions, maybe because I am not so great at setting ones I can achieve. I do think the new year is a good chance to start new traditions and to re-focus on things that are important to you. This year we started a new tradition for New Year's Day. We did fondue. Aunt Shelly got a new fondue pot and gave me her old one, which is wonderful for us. We started off with cheese fondue and moved to dessert with cho-ko-lot fondue. That was every one's favorite. It was a tradition I am sure we are going to keep because after all the eating of the holidays that something lite is perfect!
The kids had such a good time that I think we are going to do fondue a lot this year!

cheese, bread, diced pepperoni, salami all equal yum.
Addi tried to dip peanuts but she could not stick 'em.

blueberries, strawberries, bananas and marshmallows now that is serious yum!