Pre-Christmas Snow Day

I meant to write this yesterday but I didn't because something was wrong with the internet.  The kids had a snow day yesterday because of all the ..... snow.  We got a lot of snow.  A ridiculous amount.  So we decided to make the best of it and got up early and had pancakes.  I made them with my special snow-day ingredients, love and lots and lots of tears and maybe a teeny tiny bit of spit.  Just kidding.  There was no spit.  After breakfast we went outside.  ALL of us.  Me included!  Mitch snowblowed (snowblew?) the driveway, the kids shoveled (and when I say "the kids," I mean Sam) and I went sliding and snowshoeing.  It was kind of fun.

This is what we saw when we got up and looked outside.  A shit-ton of new snow and our dog just sitting in it like an idiot.

Kira jumped off the deck into the snow and it was up to her chest!  No it wasn't.  I can't lie to you.  She was squatting and trying to make me (and you) think it was up to her chest but when I watched with glee to see her struggle to try to get out of chest deep snow she just stood up.  It was quite disappointing.  

We walked up to the road through the yard.  My heart!  She was a-beatin'!  I know, you're wondering how big the biggest snowbanks were and the answer:  over my fucking head.

We took shelter under a huge pine tree and Kira started yakking at me.  I don't remember what she was talking about just then, but later she said, "If I pooped out one hundred dollars, would you touch it?"  This spurred an in-depth conversation between Mitch and me after she went to bed.  We decided that if it was one bill, yes we would touch it.  If it was 10,000 pennies, however, we'd just let it go.  We'd probably take her to the doctor, or ask her some serious question about where she got 10,000 pennies.

Then we did some sliding.  This is Kira going down the hill on her stomach (yes, on a sled) with Maisy chasing her and nipping at her face.  What?  She can't help it!  She's a herding dog, it's in her nature to bite children in the face.  

mmmmmm... faaaaaaaaaacccceeeee.......

Then I took a long snowshoe walk in the woods.  Either the snow was too fluffy, the snowshoes are broken, or I'm too fucking fat to be snowshoeing, but I was sinking pretty darn deep with every step.

It was pretty, but look at these trees - freaky!  They looked like those godzilla pod/egg things in the modern movie version of Godzilla (the lame-o one with Matthew Broderick).  I was expecting them to tear open with disgusting squelchy sounds and then to be devoured by adorable baby godzillas.  It didn't happen.  (They were just trees, dummy.)

Later we came in the house and made a ginger-bread house while watching Return of the King (OMG, Legolas!)  That is a long fricking movie.

Today we traveled to International Falls for an early Christmas with my parents and sisters, and tonight we played the game Taboo.  It's the game where you have partners and on your turn you look at a card with six words on it.  You have to try to get your partner to guess the word at the top, but you can't say the other five words on the card.  They are the best clues.  Sam was partners with my dad and he was doing really well until he got the word "pad" and passed because he somehow thought the word "pad" was too embarrassing to try to get his grandfather to guess.  I wish I knew the clues that were going through his mind.  Kira was partners with my sisters and she got the term "coat of arms" and she doesn't know what it means so she just flapped her arms and mimed putting a coat on.  It was hilarious.

Happy almost Christmas everyone!