Snow Day!

So, the Blizzard of 2009 was a bit of a let-down for those of us in Newton. We got about three inches of sleet and another four inches or so of snow--a nice little winter storm but, much like the last three Star Wars movies, nowhere near living up to its hype or our expectations. Now, Pratt, on the other hand, got 28 inches of snow. That I could classify as a blizzard. Entire houses were buried. That is awesome.

That was the past two days in Kansas. Today it climbed up to around sixty degrees and already the snow was disappearing very quickly. By the middle of the week, the ground will still be muddy, but that will be all that's left of the Greatest Storm to Rock Kansas, Ever! or whatever the news was calling it in their lead-in graphics the other night.

Here are some pictures and a brief video of us playing in the snow. My brother Ben (who lives in Louisville) surprised us by showing up at the airport yesterday asking for a ride home (this during the snow--fortunately, Libby was already in town for a funeral so it worked out swimmingly). The group of us met my other brother Jon and his family out at my folks' place. They had between 12-20 inches of snow in Cunningham, so we thought it would be fun to play in some real drifts. By the time we got there, most of them had already melted down to only semi-real drifts.

Gabe dressed up in his Randy from "Christmas Story" outfit.

Gabe looking reflectively at a stick in the snowdrift

Jon getting ready to Disco Dance his kids down the "slope" they were sledding

I'm sad to admit that this movie isn't as amusing at it should have been. Obviously, I missed his trip down the slope and the first five or ten seconds of Tanner trying to help Gabe get out of the inner tube. It was golden. But it took us that long to find the camera and get it running. You'll just have to imagine it. It really was golden, though. He looked very much like Randy from "Christmas Story," flailing about on top of the inner tube. Ah, memories. Too bad I can't share them.