Baby it's COLD outside!

BRRRRR! That's one way to describe our day yesterday. We received about 2-3 inches of the fluffy white stuff, but boy did it blow! School was dismissed at 12:15 because we were nearing blizzard/white-out conditions. The roads were getting treacherous. However, by 3:30ish, the wind died down a bit and most of the snow seemed to find a home on the ground. Abbigail (our snow bunny) was begging daddy (who decided the roads were bad enough to stay home and work on his presentations for this weekend on his laptop) to go outside and make a snowman and a snow fort. But alas, it was too cold for snowman/fort building. The snow was entirely too powdery. Dad made the mistake of mentioning that this was PERFECT skiing weather. Abbie's eyes lit up and she said "How about sledding? Can we go sledding??? PLEASE!!??" Well, a few puppy dog eyes and bribery hugs later, we were all pulling on our warmest snow gear.

Now, you must remember, we live in western Kansas, aka, the PLAINS! There are not many natural hills close by. However, our town (in it's infinite wisdom) built a new park a few years ago. When they leveled the land and dug out some area for gravel to go beneath the play equipment, they piled all the extra dirt up and made a hill...everyone around here calls it the sledding hill! And that is precisely what it is used for. During the summer kids run up it and roll down, but in the winter they SLED down. It's not very long, or extremely steep (although plenty so for my kids), but fun none the less.

We loaded up in both cars. I didn't think that with Andrew's cough he would be able to handle the cold wind, so I wanted to make sure I would be able to bring him home and Abbie could keep sledding. I also knew Bethany wouldn't do much sledding, she just isn't old enough to enjoy it that much. We piled out of the vehicles and trudged up the hill. I was trying to take pictures, so Warren came back down the hill on foot to help Bethany up the hill. About 5 feet from her he slipped and landed on his tush...OH how I laughed! I was laughing so hard I didn't get a picture until they were on their way up the hill, oh well, I have the mental image and that is enough! :o) Bethany came down once all by herself, and she loved it...last year she screamed and cried, she was terrified, what a difference a year makes. Up. Down. Up. Down. And so it went. I even came down twice with Bethany, and then we decided the wind was too cold for us. Andrew was handling the cold very well, but we didn't want to leave him stranded in case his asthma started acting up. So, Bethany and I sat in the van and watched. They had so much fun, and we had fun watching.

Andrew on his first run, riding the toboggan...super cool, it has a steering wheel and brakes! (at least it used to have a steering wheel!)

Abbie was using our toboggan (not sure of proper name, this is just what we call it!) and she hit a deep drift. She stopped dead in her tracks and flew forward, breaking the steering wheel and landing in the snow...she was fine, just mad that she broke it. We told her it was ok, it was a garage sale find that was already many years old.

When the cold people decided that they were almost froze, they decided to be very silly and all pile on top of each other to come down the hill...now that was a site to see!!! I even jumped out of the van to get a picture!

When we got home I decided to grab some frozen soup and warm it up for supper (wasn't on the menu plan, but Warren wasn't supposed to be home, so we changed plans!) I thought the BLOCK of soup and cylinder of broth was just hilarious...guess my brain was frozen. It was so yummy once it warmed up!

This is what Abbigail looked like after being inside for 10 minutes, still very ROSY!

Today it was still very cold with temps in the 20's and wind chills in the single digits to below zero. BRRR!!

Baby it's COLD outside!!