January Sun and Snow!

While we were in Texas, our town got clobbered with snow! It was piled up everywhere and so thick and pretty.  

As you can see in between the storage sheds and our house, it was knee deep in the yard.  And the roof had several feet of snow.  Of course the business behind us provided lots of great icicles!  

I took this the next morning when I was taking Kanyon to school.  Everything covered in white, but life goes on around here! 

This little fawn (and her mother just ahead of her) walked right by my back window.  It happens all the time and we are right in the middle of town. They actually bed down on our back porch! 

The kids were anxious to get out in the snow so we bundled up and headed out.  J didn't like walking in the snow, so she camped out by the trampoline and ate snow the whole time. The all-you-can-eat snow buffet! 

The snow was about 5 ft. deep on our little trampline. We had to shovel it all out before it turned to ice. It was a big job! Kan had fun digging in there.  

Q was busy tromping through the snow! 

...finding lots of icicle swords!

Busy in the kitchen.  Quinn loves to help cook, Jaylie June loves to "help" cook (as in she is right under me....closer than a shadow ALL DAY), and Kanyon is my head dish washer.  Its fun when we are all together "working". I love having them near me.  I also love how happy Kanyon is at the sink. Its my #1 babysitter.  And the more we learn about him, the more we know its actually good for him. Calming, modulating, and therapeutic! Yay! So that water bill is actually just another therapy bill! :) 

After we got home, the kids got their Christmas presents from us. Me, Sydni, and Kory teamed up to make some teepees for the boys and Jaylie June got a kitchen!!!  You can find her cooking "cakes" all day long! 

KLP is so much fun in the snow with the kids! They worked really hard on this snow tunnel, complete with icicle gates! 

The boys are sitting up on top of what they called "Penguin slides". They loved sliding down the sides like little penguins. 

A better view of the tunnel and gates.

When there is snow on the streets, the plows come through and clear the streets.  It piles the snow up in the middle of the street then they come back through later and haul that snow off. Here is the street right in front of our house.  The snow was piled up almost 10 feet! Look closely and you'll see Q at the top of the pile! 

One of Quinn's drawings. "Its Jaylie with pigtails! And its raining but she has a balloon."

Here is the snow removal team at work on our street.  I love watching this. Maybe all this stuff is just fun to me because I'm new, but I get a kick out of watching it work.  This tractor thing sucks up the snow and then it shoots into the back of the dump truck that drives beside the tractor. Teamwork.  

Just a week or so after all that snow, the sun came out and we enjoyed lots of good time outside.  The boys were happy to be back "at work" at their stumps Uncle Tye and Aunt Rachael gave them for Christmas.  They got their own hammer and nails so they can hammer hammer hammer!  

The snow was starting to melt, but the kids were dying to go sledding. So we went out to the ranch and had some fun on one of the hills.  

Good ol' Dad dragging kids back up the hill (no snowmobiles that day....we missed them!) 

Q ready to go!

Daddy and Q ready for take off! 

Jaylie's first sled.  She was sort of frozen in fear/uncertainty through the whole thing. Ha! 

KLP and klp.  klp LOVES the speed, doesn't mind the snow in his face, and has SO MUCH FUN! He is such a speed junkie.  

Good ol' Hungry Hungry Hippos.  This time Quinn started saying a prayer before the game started...get it??? Praying before a meal??  Haha! I guess he's keepin' those Hippos on the straight and narrow! 

My crazy girl! 

Jaylie June just tryin to stay warm

The boys always go to bed earlier than Jaylie, so that means she sometimes gets to do fun things at night..like face time Uncle Clint and Aunt Rachel....and their CAT! She was soooooo excited (though you can't tell in this picture). 

She got all cozy on her chair and made sure her baby was cozy too.  

Kanyon got a new pair of glasses just a couple of months ago but they were TERRIBLE.  They were bent and crooked all the time.  So we decided to get new ones.  The lady in the office convinced me to try plastic frames.  I think they're cute....on other kids.  You know when something is cute on some people but you don't feel like it "fits" you.  Well, thats sort of how I felt about these glasses. But we decided to go for it and instead of calling them "preppy"or "hipster" (descriptions that don't exactly fit Kan or us) we think of it more like he's channeling his inner Kevin Durant.  NBA MVP is much more our style.  ha! 

Speaking of glasses, hiding behind these sunglasses is a zonked out little girl.  

So we had all that crazy snow at the beginning of January and then after that we had CRAZY WARM weather! There were no complaints coming from our corner of the world! We spent as much time as we could playing outside and soaking up the sun (without having to spend 20 minutes putting snow clothes on!).

After Christmas break, we changed Kanyon's school schedule.  Instead of going 3 full days a week, he now goes 5 half days.  His mornings are VERY hard. His seizure meds make him super sleepy and he functions best if he gets a little bit of a nap when those meds hit.  Obviously that wasn't happening when he was going to school in the mornings. His school days were long and he was getting very tired.  I think starting his days off so tired and uncomfortable from the meds made it really hard to recover.  So now, he goes to school at 11 in time to eat lunch with his class and carry on the rest of the day. It has been a great change for him and his days have been much more smooth, peaceful, and productive.  All that to say, we have more "school nights" now.  The boys love to sleep in the same bed, but I only let them do that on nights that klp doesn't have school.  So, with this new schedule and all, they look forward to Friday nights when "tomorrow is not a school day" as they say.  It happens all the time, but it kills me every time.  Here are the best brothers in the world sharing that tiny bed. 

The last weekend in January was the Winter Fair here in town.  Winter weather hit that day and it was cold and snowy (for the first time in several weeks) but that didn't stop us from heading out for the stick horse rodeo.  We did this last year so they boys were excited.  

Here's all the rodeo kids. It was actually a much smaller crowd than last year! The boys had fun and as you can imagine there was some major cuteness going on with each rodeo "event".  

And there goes January!!!!!!!