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Bunny Cake -- Julie's Still Got It

My talented wife! She whipped up this bunny cake today while watching Carson, his friend, and Alana. It's for a bake sale that is part of the rescheduled Glacier Ridge Elementary Meltdown festival this weekend (rescheduled from last weekend's blizzard).

[Julie] Alana's Snow Wardrobe

Alana really enjoys changing her clothes. Her choice of clothing during this snowstorm started off pretty standard - snow pants, warm coat, hat, etc. As the past few days have come and gone, so too has her sense of winter clothing. Apparently, she is ready for spring fashions with sundresses and bathing suits.

[Julie] Record Snowfalls

Rewind to the end of January when Benton whined about the lack of snow. His question to me was "When are going to get snow that is fun?" We had a few fun snows earlier in the season, but January was mostly dusting or too fast to melt.

Officially, we have snow that is fun....... Snow has been coming down since about 9:30am Friday morning. I shoveled 4 times yesterday, trying to avoid a huge pile-up. That seemed a bit useless this morning when I looked out and could not see where my driveway started. I managed to shovel the 12+ inches that were on it. Once finished, there was another inch or so where I had already shoveled. It is starting to taper off and the blizzard warning officially ends at 4:00pm today.

Alana is going to Caroline's house across the street at 4:00pm so I can walk with the boys down to the neighborhood sledding hill. Otherwise, we will be hanging out at home. The school carnival and the Recreation Center's Superheros event, which we were planning to attend today, have been cancelled. Tim's flight from Austin has been cancelled for tomorrow due to our weather, so the laundry will have to wait until Monday night. At this point, no more snow is forecasted, until tomorrow ;-]

This is a view of the backyard taken this morning about 9:00am. We have had 6+ hours of snow since these pictures were taken.

A view out the Family Room window taken this morning. If you look out toward the pine tree at the top of the picture, you see a small item in the snow - which is the almost covered fire hydrant. As of now, this item is fully buried.

Alana decided to climb on the wall and "ride the horsey". She helped shovel the snow with a garden trowel.

[Julie] Alana's Bedroom

Ah, rest time!!! Yes, a 45 to 90 minute window in which Alana plays quietly in her room. Today, she was extremely willing to head to her room and play. We have not been home at rest time in the past few days, so it was a nice chance to reacquaint herself with her dolls, toys, books, and puzzles.

ALL OF THEM....

AT THE SAME TIME!

Since she came downstairs when rest time was over, I did not discover this toy disaster area until I was in the middle of making dinner. I figured we would head up after dinner to clean this up when everyone was getting PJ's on for the night. As it happens, our evening did not go as planned since we made a trip to the urgent care clinic right after dinner. By the time we hit the doctor's office, made it to Walgreen's, and grabbed Carson a fast food burger so he could have food in his stomach for his antibiotics, it was way past bedtime and I was not too excited about her integrated-play period's remnants.

Ugh, rest time!!! A 45 to 90 minute window in which Alana trashes her room. Gone are the good old days of napping, and I do miss them.

[Julie] Laundry

Dear Tim,

We hope you are enjoying your vacation from chores while in Austin this week. We are following our normal routine of generating dirty clothes (mainly Alana who likes to change outfits at least 3 times a day), washing and drying the clothes, and then lining the laundry baskets up for you to fold when you return. You have been gone for 3 days now and already Benton is out of pants and Alana ran out of underwear, so we decided we needed to fold a little laundry before you returned later in the week.

We planned to fold all but one basket of laundry. Benton and Carson took care to sort the baskets and make sure we folded what they needed. So, yes, praise us for our willingness to step in and take over for you in your absence. As you can see, we left you only one basket.

Much Love,

Your ever-so-domesticated laundry-folding-averse wife

[Julie] Tea Party Time

It might be winter, but that did not stop Alana from wanting to have a tea party outside earlier this week when the weather was a little bit on the sunny side. She decided the tea cup was a good way to make snow balls.