Saturday, January 3, 2009

Winter Wonderland

Yes, I realize it's long past Christmas. And technically, here in Austin, today it's 75 degrees. But since a week ago I was freezing my butt off in Michigan, and I haven't blogged in nearly 2 weeks, I reserve the right to use the above title.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all that jazz. I hope everyone had a great holiday season. Mine was great. I feel like I don't even know where to begin to blog in order to try and catch everyone up with what's been going on. And then I decided I don't really care, I'm just gonna go for it. So up first is all the winter fun The Cowboy and I had in Michigan.

Let me begin by saying that we drove up in 1 day - 22 hours to be exact - only stopping to eat, pee, and get gas. Sometimes all in one stop. The Cowboy, God Bless him, drove all but 5 hours of that journey, and those 5 hours really wiped me out. I'm a wimp. Anyway, we didn't have ANY inclement weather or bad weather on the journey up (or home, for that matter). It was a completely uneventful trip, except that I was actually able to knit for quite sometime and ordinarily, I can't knit (or read) in a moving vehicle. So that was quite an accomplishment for me.

I digress. We didn't hit snow until about Toledo, which is about 40 minutes from my mom's house. Now let me tell you that the way my mom, my aunts, cousins and friends were talking, I was expecting to hit blizzards in Kentucky. Not so much. A little dusting of snow in Dayton, OH, but otherwise no snow until we hit Michigan for the most part.

But then, when we hit Michigan,.....oh boy.
Snow galore. Inches and inches of it.

Here's Lloyd, atop a mound of snow on a table on my mom's deck.

And it continued to snow the day we got there. The roads were awful. Snow was everywhere. What do you do when you're from Texas and you go up to Michigan and you are surrounded by more snow than you've ever seen before?

Why, you build a snowman. Of course.

I've never seen The Cowboy so excited. Me? Eh. I could take it or leave it. It was fun for 10 minutes. But The Cowboy, being from Texas, had to have a BIG GIANT Snowman. Because everything is bigger in Texas, and he wanted that rule to apply to his snowman. I got bored. Fast. And cold.
So I took lots of breaks.
But The Cowboy's snowman-shaping technique was sloppy, so I had to step in and assist.

Lloyd, I'd like to mention, was no help whatsoever. He was busy making snow-gnome-angels.
We both look like idiots in this one.

Our efforts paid off. Introducing......
Arnold. I don't know why we named him that, but we did, and it stuck. Arnold and Lloyd.
The whole fam.

I loved Arnold. He was a great and loyal snowman. For 3 days. And then, tragedy struck.

Ah, what are you gonna do?

11 comments:

Bean Counting Knitter said...

Happy New Year Cappy! That is the best snow ~ the kind I see in pictures that is. :-)

Anonymous said...

How fun! Being from California, I would have been in the snow too! Glad you had a good trip.

Anonymous said...

Such cute photos! Happy New Year!

Unknown said...

I'm glad you're back safe and sound. Arnold was a loyal friend for the three days of his short life. sigh. To be a snowman.

Anyway, love the pics. I'm glad you had fun. Can't wait to see more.

Anonymous said...

The pictures are so cute! We are glad to have you back in Texas. Y'all were missed. So Sorry that Arnold couldn't make the journey home with you. You know you could have just put him in the back of the pickup like we do with every living creature here in Texas.

Daisymum said...

I like your gnome angel. So super cute!!!!!! It looks like you had fun.

Anonymous said...

it was great to see you while you were in MI. miss you already.

Anonymous said...

Oh poor Arnold. At least he was loved while he was here!!

Glad to have you back!

kristi from AR

Marcie said...

Chip, it was so nice to see you and the Cowboy in Michigan. I just knew he'd love the snow. :) Too bad Arnold didn't last but since it's snowing again today maybe he'll reappear!

Reenie said...

That's one BIG snowman. I'm glad you and The Cowboy had a great time, and made it home safely.

Lisa-tastrophies said...

Poor Arnold, we barely knew him. R.I.P.

Good to see that Cowboy had such a good time in the snow. Let's see how much he loves it at 6a.m. when he's running late to work and there is 5 inches on the ground and he has to shovel the car, the driveway and half a street block before he can leave. Yeah, I loved it right up until then.