SNOW!!!

It snowed in St. George!!  Yes I knew you wouldn't believe me so I took pictures.  Here is our cute snowman Russell built with the kids:

OK so these are pictures of the first time it snowed.  The first time it snowed it was the typical St. George snow.  It fell, we played in it and made a snowman, snow angels, and threw snowballs and then it melted the next day.   Well then the blizzard came.  Yes I said the blizzard!  It started in the morning of December 7. The snow started to fall and we were so excited I bundled the kids up in our hardly-ever-used-winter-coats and we ran outside to play.

We had fun stomping through the wet snow, and catching snowflakes on our tongues.  Then we got cold and went inside.  Well the snow continued to fall all day long and our whole yard was soon covered with fresh snow.

By the time Russell got home from work at 7 pm this is what our front yard looked like.  If you can't tell from the picture, there is 8 inches of snow on our driveway!  Russell is shoveling our driveway for the first time ever.  He is even using a scoop shovel because we don't have a snow shovel.  I mean we live in St. George, why would we ever need a snow shovel?!  All of the roads in the city were completely iced over.  It took Russell twice as long to get home from work this day because traffic was so slow and he had to find an alternative route home that did not include any hills because of the ice.  He said it was insane how many cars had slid off the road.

That night, we had a family Christmas party to go to at Clay and Shauna's house.  We were really worried we would not be able to make it there because of all of the snow and icy roads.  After Russell shoveled the driveway, however, we were able to get the van out and cautiously drove to Ivins for the party.  We had a great time at the party.  We all commented on how much snow was everywhere.  This had to be some kind of record.  While at the party, we all got text messages telling us that church had been cancelled the next day due to snow fall and icy roads.  We were told to stay home and stay safe.  That's right we live in Utah and we got a snow day from church!  I'm not going to lie; we were pretty happy.  Sometime during the night, the blizzard stopped.  When we woke up, we were excited to go out and play in the snow.  So instead of having church, this is what we did all morning:

We PLAYED!!!  Don't worry we also did service for our neighbors.  Russell and Tom (our neighbor) shoveled the driveways of most of the people on our street.  Then when they were done, he got out the four wheeler and took all of the kids on our street for a sled ride.  The kids had a blast being pulled behind the four wheeler.  On the sled in the pictures above is our friends Braxton and Easton Lay with Colby, Emily and Logan.  These kids seemed to have the most fun of all.  Even I rode on the sled with Logan and I have to admit, it was a lot of fun. Logan loved it and didn't want to get off.  

We had a lot of fun in the snow.  The snow was so powdery it wouldn't even form into a ball so we couldn't make a snowman but that was okay because we were getting cold.  The kids loved the snow but they did not like the cold.  After playing for about an hour, they started complaining about being cold.  When I say complaining I actually mean bawling and screaming.  I now have a greater appreciation for the pioneers who walked for miles in the snow and freezing temperatures with no shoes or coats or anything.  Their kids must have cried even louder than mine and they still pressed on.  I don't know that I could have done it.  I have been cold all month long and it is driving me crazy.  I don't know how they did it.

Even though they cancelled church, they did not cancel tithing settlement.  After playing in the snow and taking a nap, we got cleaned up and headed up to the church for tithing settlement.  There are priorities!

It has been so cold here. This snow has stayed forever!  Temperatures have been in the single digits and the high temperatures have only been like 30 degrees.  Russell and I have been talking about moving to Logan, UT on and off during our marriage and now after living in the cold for that last couple of weeks, we are having second thoughts!  We are such wimps!  We are definitely desert rats.  The news said that the last time these temperatures and conditions happened in St. George was in 1969!  So I have been calling this the 100 year freeze.  These conditions never happen.  We laugh about having a snow day from church but literally the whole city shut down that day!  St. George had to borrow snow plows from Gunlock and Cedar City to plow the roads.  The city even ran out of salt to put on the roads.  The city had to totally revamp for a winter storm.

My favorite part of the snow is the long icicles hanging off the roofs.  Some of them are so big and long!  I don't know if I have ever seen icicles before now.  Our house faces the north so the snow in our front yard has not melted at all.  Because we have a metal roof, all of the snow has slid off the roof and made a huge ice pile right in front of our house.  You cannot even get to our front door without mountain climbing over this 2 foot ice/snow mountain.  It is a good thing we put the Christmas tree in front of our door because we can't use it anyway because of the snow.  

We have had a lot of fun in the snow.