Daddy brought back snow!

Chris had a great ski trip to Breckenridge last week. Yes, that's right... ANOTHER ski trip . This time, he went with Brent and his church's men's group. Chris is the cool one on the snowboard. Chris claims he had a better experience snowboarding this trip than the one in January. However, every time I talked to him he was on his way to the hot tub to smoke a cigar with the Pastor... so, I don't know how much skiing actually took place. His bum is still sore, so he must have done something athletic up there.

Josh and I missed Chris, but filled up our schedule quite nicely. All the wives of the skiing husbands got together for a taco dinner at Paula's house. Josh loved playing with Garrett's kitchen and served up several platters of imaginary pancakes for us to enjoy.

Another lonely night, we headed to

Katie's house for a full-fledged slumber party. Josh and Katie were in heaven as they snuggled in bed and chased each other in their PJs. Josh enjoyed commandeering all of Katie's stuffed animals for the night, but Katie was happy to share with her man.

A few days later, Chris finally gave Josh his souvenir gift from Colorado....

A SNOW STORM!!!!

A magical moment for a three-year old? I think so.

(And for his thirty-something year-old mom? Yes, indeed.)

The three of us literally crawled out of bed into our warm clothes and headed outside. Chris ans Josh built a nice little Mexican snowman before Chris had to head to work. Josh's big, huge, giant tractor helped move the snow around. Eventually, the poor snowman got decapitated. Josh was quite distressed about it, naturally.

Josh had such a blast throwing himself into the mounds of snow in the front yard.

I think Murphy enjoyed the snow as much as Josh. You would never know she suffers from a gimp hip. Jackson loved it so much that he plowed over me to make a dash out the front door and went for a nice, brisk run around the neighborhood, much to our distress.

"First, we'll make snow angels for two hours, then we'll go ice skating, then we'll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse cookie-dough as fast as we can, and then we'll snuggle."

Will Ferrell, Elf.

Will Ferrell pretty much summed up how we spent our days in the snow. Except we went sledding, not skating.

Snow angels- check. Cookie dough- check. Snuggles- check.

Lucky for Josh, his mama was raised in snowy Colorado and knows a thing or two about playing in the snow. We found a nice big hill by our house and went sledding.

Josh was ecstatic about this new-found sport and insisted on going down the hill over and over and over. What he didn't enjoy was going back UP the hill.

"Mommy, you take me up the hill?"

"No, Josh you can walk up the hill yourself."

"But, Mommy, I'm too small for the big hill. I can't do it."

"Nice try little man, but you weigh close to 40 pounds and have been walking for over 2 years now... suck it up, buddy!"

He did, and this outdoor excursion resulted in a delightful 2 hour nap that afternoon. Thank you snow-God!

Although sledding was a clear hit, throwing snowballs was Josh's favorite snow activity. Well, actually, what he really loved was getting hit by the snowballs. He would lay on his stomach and say, "Mommy, hit me again." At first, I would gently toss a lightly-packed snowball at him, but that just wasn't as much fun. The harder the better. He laughed uncontrollably when I would cream him with massive snowballs. I can only imagine what people thought when they saw me pelting the dickens out of him with snowballs.

We got the boys together for a snow play date. Giving three active boys permission to throw snowballs at each other lead to some crazy wild moments. In this picture, poor John G. is minding his own business trying to enjoy a nice, afternoon swing while Josh and John M. are using him as target practice.

Thanks to the record breaking snow storm, we have had one of the best weeks in memory. However, as much as Josh, Chris, and I love the cold weather and waking up to the snow, the amount of laundry I've done in the past couple days and the number of times I have had to heat Josh's frozen little fingers with my hot breath, has convinced me not to move back to Colorado.

Mom and Dad, I honestly don't know how you did it for all those years.