A snow day!

Wow!  Snow in Phoenix?!  Look at it coming down!!!!

So there was snow in Phoenix, but it wasn't falling from the sky.  (Although it has snowed a few times here in the Valley before).  At the community where our friends from college, Tom & Kalleen, recently moved, snow (ok...maybe more like shaved ice) was brought in for some fun "winter play".  They had a small mound set up for the little ones & then created a rather impressive sledding hill for the bigger guys. We were quite excited to be invited over & to give Andrew his first experience in the chilly, white stuff.  

You can see here that Andrew didn't quite know what to make of all this.  He was SOOOO excited when we told him that we were going to play in the snow.  However, that excitement soon changed to uncertainty once we had to start putting on things like mittens, coats & hats. It has been cold enough here recently for jackets, long-sleeve shirts & pants (and in fact the morning of our snow play got down to almost freezing, so it was pretty chilly).  But, the idea of a big coat & the other accessories were quite a change for him; I can almost hear him thinking to himself here, "hmmmm, what is this stuff?!" as he looks down pondering what we had put him in.   

Andrew was very slow to be willing to try out the snow fun.  Even with coaxing from us & Daddy going out on the snow with him, he still didn't want much to do with it.  Luke on the other hand had no problem!  He is 15 months younger than Andrew & marched right out there with no hesitation.  

 So, Brian and I just sort of starting playing with the snow & finally Andrew thought it looked like fun.  Of course, what he thought was really fun was tossing the snow at us or picking some up to sprinkle it on us.  

Once he decided that it was actually OK, we were able to go out on the snow.  We had a good time making little snowballs & patting the snow.  
You can see here what fun he had throwing snowballs at Daddy or "playing chase" with Daddy, complete with snowball in hand.

It was definitely a fun little adventure & one we are hoping to do "for real" sometime in the next few weeks.  The state was hit hard with a winter storm yesterday.  It rained all day here--giving us almost an inch of rain & we had 75mph winds last night (which was REALLY scary).  The "high country" (like Flagstaff) got 20 inches of snow!!!   And, there is another chance for more weather on Thursday.  So, we think that we might be able to find some places that will definitely have snow "stuck" on the ground for the next few weeks.  A weekend day-trip to Prescott, Sedona, or Flag for some snow play sounds like fun!