Snow (and Ice) Days!

Dallas was blanketed by a major ice storm recently, but we were so lucky during it.  Unlike most of my friends, we managed to keep power the entire weekend, kept internet and cable services, and just got to hunker down in our toasty warm house and enjoy the fun winter weather.  Everything in Dallas shut down, so all the fun holiday activities I had planned for the weekend were postponed or cancelled (we were especially sad to have Charlie and Evie's school Christmas program cancelled--it just killed me to miss them "singing" in church!), but we managed to have a ton of fun anyway.  Not surprisingly, Daddy's work was not cancelled (Parkland managed to proceed along quite nicely in spite of the weather), and even had a conference in North Dallas that wasn't cancelled (not sure how they managed that!), so he was in and out all weekend.  

It was so fun when Charlie woke up on Friday morning.  He ran into my room shouting, "Mommy!  It snowed!  It is winter now!  It is Christmas!"  Sadly for Charlie, it was not Christmas, but I don't think he even noticed, as he was mostly so excited about the snow.  It was all I could do to get him to eat some breakfast and wait for Evie to wake up.

Here is our Christmas house with a snowy background.

Our snowy backyard.

Guess who went up to his room and got himself dressed all by himself?  This boy can get ready in record time if his attire is: (1) a football uniform or (2) snow gear.

This little snow bunny was pretty excited too.

It was more ice than snow, but that made it so fun to slide around on.  Charlie and I loved sliding around on the driveway and pretending we were ice skating.  I think Charlie could have done it for hours!

It was SO cold, but so fun outside!

This video is a little long, but Evie cracks me up in it.  As she doesn't love wearing her gloves or hat, isn't quite as steady on the ice as Charlie, and doesn't love being cold (even though she won't wear gloves or hat), she was a little more unsure about the whole snow/ice experience.  Here she is informing me that "I not go down dere!"

Charlie wanted to inspect every part of our neighborhood...

Here is Charlie playing in his "forest" (a little wooded area close to our house).  He and Evie love to sneak back here and explore, and the snow made it even more fun.  Naturally, he was on a bear hunt in the woods here.  His only frustration was that he couldn't tempt Evie up, but the icy rock climb made her a little nervous.

Going deep into his forest...

When we weren't playing outside, we came up with fun things to do inside.  The kids are really into Play-Doh right now, and it is one of the only things they will sit and do for an hour.  Evie sneaks into our craft closet about 5 times/day and comes out with Play-Doh, demanding for me to help her get it out.  Shockingly, they also clean up their Play-Doh remarkably well, so it is one of my favorite activities too!  Evie will only use pink Play-Doh, but luckily, Charlie branches out a bit more.

We get stir-crazy fast, so we had more outside time over the weekend...

Charlie loved finding anything covered in ice.  The icy leaves were so cool!

I love this little snow bunny!

Unfortunately for Miss E, there was a lot of falling. :(  As Eves says, "UH OH!"

I tried to explain to Charlie that you can't make snow angels on ice, but he had to try it for himself.  Verdict?  You can't make snow angels on ice.

Charlie was quite pleased once he figured out that he could "sled" down our neighbors' hills on his bottom. :)

Icy trees.

It was a long pajama party over the icy weekend.  Can you tell we got a bit of cabin fever?

When Clint got home from his conference on Saturday, he had the best idea: sledding at White Rock Lake!  We grabbed cardboard boxes (where do you find sleds in Texas?) and headed down to a good spot and were lucky enough to run into some friends (who were much more resourceful and brought big plastic bins from Ace Hardware).

Here is the snowy lakefront...

We started sledding and I really think this was one of Charlie's highlights of the year.  He had a huge smile every time he shot down the hill, and loved that they could get going pretty fast.  He kept racing back up the hill, shouting, "let's do this over and over again until we are really tired!"  I don't think he ever would have gotten really tired, but we did it until Evie and I thought we might be getting frostbite. :)

Silly Evie did not want her hat or her mittens and did not like the idea of sledding.  She was more than happy to watch Charlie (and was a fun little cuddler), but was very definitive about her desires: "I NOT do dat!"

These are our intrepid sledders.  They were so pumped up after all that fun!

Here are some videos of Charlie (and Daddy's) exploits:

First, Charlie tried it out on a cardboard box that Daddy brought.  It was fun...

...but not nearly as fast as the plastic tub that some of our friends arrived with!  [Notice Evie in the background, "I don't yike dat!"]

Charlie sped down several times in that...

...before he realized that he would go much faster if he had more weight in his tub.  So he hopped in with his little friend Tristan, ejecting Tristan's poor cousin out of the tub (she did rejoin them later, and the three of them went really fast!).

Daddy didn't want to let Charlie have all the fun:

Such a fun night!