Dreaming of a white Christmas?

Here are some pretty funny pictures from our blizzard that has completely shut down Colorado. Every highway has been closed in and out of the state, mail service has been shut down for a few days, school was closed yesterday in anticipation of the storm and was closed today and maybe tomorrow (yay!), most businesses are closed, and it's still snowing. We've got a couple feet at our house with bigger drifts in most spots. Enjoy the pictures. It's a whopper of a storm:

Chris leaving for work at 7:30 on his snow bike:

11:00 when Chris got sent home from work:

Chris leaving on a bike ride (yep, a bike ride) around 12:30. He made it to the end of the subdivision in about an hour and a half, pushed 4 cars out from being stuck, and came home.

2:30:


Turbo loves the snow!

Our front door and car last night around 9:


Me and Turbo on the deck -- I'm 5'6" and that's a 70 pound Golden in snow past his head:

The door from our bedroom to the deck:

This morning:

Mom and Dad's pictures:



That's it for now, still snowing! Chris and I are driving to St. Louis (hopefully) tomorrow for Christmas, so we hope the plows do their job! Merry Christmas everyone!

*****EDIT: HOLY SH*T! Merry Christmas to me! I saw that they have officially closed school tomorrow which means I got an extra three days tacked on to my Christmas break. SWEEEEEEET!

SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I FINALLY got a snow day! It's been more than 15 years, but I finally woke up, got dressed, and found out school was cancelled. SWEET! I'm betting school will be cancelled again tommorrow as we are expected to have about 2 feet from this blizzard by noon tomorrow. Chris just called and his work has officially closed too, so he's on his way home to refuel and then be a crazy man and go on a bike ride. Schools are cancelled, businesses are closed, I-70 is closed completely to the Kansas border, they are talking about closing I-25 south of Denver through the springs, flights are cancelled, even the post office is cancelling deliveries. Only 3 days left until two weeks off for Christmas break and so far, at least one of them has been cancelled. I need the time to clean the house, pack, and get ready for our trip on Friday afternoon. So far it's looking like this storm should be past by the time we start driving east. Yay! SNOW DAY!!!

(Pictures of psycho-chris and the quickly accumulating snow to come later today -- ooh, and my new knitting project)

Tagged

I've been tagged by the hubby! 5 things people probably don't know about me (although this is a little humerous because hubby is really the only person that reads and comments on my blog with any sort of regularity and I'm sure I would have to spend a long time to think of even one thing he doesn't already know about me):

1) I didn't get asked to my senior prom and my oldest brother knew how bummed I was so he invited me up to Boulder (where he was a junior in college) and he took me to a fancy dinner and drove me around Flagstaff. The night with him was much better than prom ever would've been. It's appropriate that he set me up with Chris less than a year later.

2) I've never had an ear infection, broken bone, or stitches. Up until recently, I hadn't ever even had an antibiotic.

3) I taught myself to ride a bike by sitting on a neighbor's bike and then riding away. My parents were so surprised that they put me in the car and went and bought me my first bike -- purple banana seat with basket in the front and tassels off the side. I was awesome.

4) I have 40something first cousins -- fully blood related too (I always use this one as "no one knows this about me" so I'm sure everyone knows this about me)

5) I was awarded a scholarship in college for appearing to be a promising elementary school teacher -- something I didn't apply for but was supposedly nominated for by some professor in college -- it would've been huge news except Chris proposed two days later and it got lost in the excitement. That was the greatest week ever.

P.S: I was soooooooooo cute (this was at my very first "bike race" -- darn 2nd place!)


Now I feel sad because I have no one to tag that hasn't already been there and done that. If you're reading this and haven't been tagged, consider yourself tagged.

"Togetherness is the best holiday treat"

Words of wisdom from one of our Dove chocolates today. They really do have great little quotes in those, and the delicious chocolate is the best.

Yesterday Chris and I had a really nice day together.

Breakfast at LePeep (yum!) followed by some Christmas shopping at the mall and then a trip to Boulder where I was abandoned at the yarn store (gasp!) while Chris went on a secret mission to get a present for yours truly. Unfortunately, he won't tell me what it is despite my best efforts and most pathetic sad faces. We got some California Club sandwiches at Jasons Deli and then headed home to see that Turbo had stollen a paper towel roll off the counter and shredded it into a million pieces. Naughty dog. After that, we watched Cars while Chris rode on the trainer and then we went on feasted on some delicious free Qdoba and headed to bed.

It was nice to spend an entire day with the husband. In these training days, a whole day together is rare. I'm looking forward to our trip to St. Louis where we'll have more fun time together. We are both bringing our bikes for a few rides (and if Chris has his way, he'll be riding his a lot more than one would think you would on a vacation). As long as he doesn't get the grand idea to "race" me through Kansas on his bike while I drive, we'll come back still married :)


Here's a funny Christmas story about my silly kids at work...

We read a story called "Oliver Kringle" about a bus driver that looks like Santa but turns out to be Santa's brother. It's all about Santa's family and how they all help out on Christmas. Anyway, at the end of the book, one of my little ones said "this book is nonfiction!" (after all of these months, it is still SO hard for these little guys to understand the difference between fiction and nonfiction, but they pretend they do -- they always apply the overgeneralization that fiction is fake and nonfiction is real).
Here's what followed:

me: "well, if this book was nonfiction, it would be giving us facts and information about Santa, and it's really only telling us a story for fun so I think it's probably fiction"

kid: he got this sad look on his face and said "but it could be real. Santa is real isn't he?"

me: "That's true, but it still seems to be a story that someone made up about him"

kid: (still with a little of a confused and defeated face) "But Santa is real and he could have brothers, we don't know, so it's nonfiction. Santa is real right?"

me: "Yep, you're right, definetely nonfiction"

Oh man. Should've seen that one coming...

Sick day

As of 3 am this morning, I called in a sub and declared today a sick day. Chris and I have both been fighting off a nasty cold -- although he's much better at declaring himself fine even if he feels terrible and it seems to work. I'm mostly a big whiny baby when I feel bad and that probably doesn't help me get better quicker. He's at work and I'm here trying to force myself to find something to eat for breakfast and it's already lunch time. Anyway...

We hosted the after-party for my staff Christmas party on Friday night. A few people stopped over and the whole night was fun. One of the teachers brought her little 5 month old Golden over to play with Turbo. Let's just say that Turbo looked a bit like Cujo by the time the night was finished:


And this was the vicious culpret:

Poor little guy was losing his teeth and ended up bleeding all over Turbo. It was funny to see two adorable goldens look like they had been in such a nasty fight! They loved each other and had a great time.

Well, that's about it. Time to force myself to eat and then lay on the couch. I better be feeling better tomorrow, with all of these planned out of town races of Christopher's (and a certain someone's wedding in February), I'm running dangerously low on days off. Maybe I'll get to puke in front of my students for a nice change. Hmmm....

Tis the Season

I have to say that I love Kohl's. It's awesome. I got 3 oranments for our staff ornament exchange, two huge things of wrapping paper, a mystery present for Chris, and went across the street and got a tasty Jamba Juice all for $20 (which is what the ornaments originally cost). Sweet. I'm super excited!

"She's something when she's one of the guys, something else when she's not"

That's a line from a Garth song that gets me thinking every time it's played. I can't decide if I like it or not. I hear it in the song and it trips me up and I don't even hear the rest of the song. I get stuck on trying to figure out whether or not it makes sense. I get hung up on lines from songs, but usually I get over it after hearing the song enough. This one has stuck.

I feel like it describes me and I feel like I wish it didn't.

I'm am, sadly, much more comfortable being one of the guys. I'll never be able to pull off being the girly girl that I'd love to try out being.

It really hit me this weekend when we were over for a dinner at my parents' house with the family. My brother has married the most gorgeous girly girl. She is shorter and always wears big skinny heels. She usually doesn't take them off, but she did this weekend and I couldn't get over the height and thinness of these heels. They were gorgeous and I would LOVE to be able to wear shoes like that and not look like a total idiot. I realized that I will never be able to pull that off. I picked up the shoes, oggling at them, and my brother said "you could wear those, you're a girl". I immediately came back with "yeah, if I was born with sisters instead of brothers" and he looked at me like I had lost it and said "what about that lady that just walked out called your sister?" I don't think he's ever really realized that he and my other brother were the only sibling influences on my life. I pointed out that she moved out when I was 8 or 9 and didn't have any significant female influence other than taking me to get my ears pierced when I was 12. I've always considered myself the girl amongst a family of boys.

I've never been a tom-boy, never been a girly girl. We had a girls' night out at the Boulder Dinner Theater (great show -- "Crazy For You") and had a really good time. I realized that I have to work to feel equally comfortable being with the girls at a musical as I do with the guys riding bikes or working on cars. I think the reason I can't quite grasp the line "She's something when she's one of the guys, something else when she's not" is that it doesn't give me an answer as to which is better. Is she something good when she's one of the guys and then something not as good when she's not? Is she better when she's not? Am I overthinking it and it's really all about sex like most songs? I feel much more comfortable being the one girl amid a group of guys, then I am being in a group of girls. Urgh. Do I like the line in the song? Is it good or bad? I'm confused. Hmmm...