snow day with friends!

When we woke up the next morning after the snowstorm, we found a winter wonderland outside.  It was so beautiful!  Please note the middle picture.  That is a palm tree, which is obviously not made for snow! Ha!

If we know anything about snow here in the Antelope Valley, we know that once the morning comes the snow does not stay long.  We wanted to enjoy it as much as possible so a few of my friends (and their kids!) met up with myself & the boys at our church to play.  They have a huge park with a big, grassy field that we knew would be perfect to play in.  We had the BEST time.  

Our friends had brought some of their sleds and one of the youth interns, Hilary, ran around pulling the kids on it.  I love this picture, can you see that Sean & his best friend Caden happened to take a spill just as I took it?

My good friend Sarah and her sweet, bundled daughter Grace

Nolan made us laugh so much... he just wanted to wander around everywhere.  We'd look up and he'd be 100 feet away just walking around.  I guess he wanted to check everything out.  It was so funny.

Sean had to make a snow angel... he makes "snow angels" in everything- the sand, the carpet, his bed, etc so it was SO fun for him to make a REAL snow angel!

Nolan loved trying to make snowballs and throw them.  And as a total turn around from the day before, he kept his gloves on the whole time (and was much more happy... or happier for a longer period of time. ha!)

Our friend Karen brought her grandson to play too.  She helped the kids make a snowman.  Well, as you can see Nolan is obviously the one helping her ;)

All the big boys wanted to make a HUGE snowball, and had a blast rolling it together all over the park.  It got so big they could hardly push it- it was heavy!

Sean trying to push it by himself :)  It is almost as big as he is!

Sean & Caden thinking they could maybe move it together

Nolan and his buddy Gavin taking a ride on the sled

 We got a picture of all the kids together with their snowman.  Such special, fun memories!!
Back: Sean, Hunter, Vincent, Abbie, Aaden
Front: Grace, Caden, Nolan, Gavin

And of course, the day was not complete without a meltdown from Nolan, snot and all! ;)

We are really hoping it would snow again this winter, since the daddies missed the fun snow day (Hunter, Caden, & Grace's dad is the youth pastor and was on the missions trip with Dathan, and the other daddies were at work).  I know it's wishful thinking, but we can hope, right? :)

snow day... in california??

The day it snowed was a very rare Sunday for me.  Dathan left that morning with the youth to a missions trip to Mexico, and my parents were out of town, so it was just me & the boys.  We actually stayed home from church & just kind of slept in and relaxed.  That afternoon I went to go work at my "job" at the church for a couple hours and one of the youth came over to watch the boys while they napped.  While I was working it started snowing, which the weather had predicted it would.  But it wasn't really sticking.  On the way home it started snowing harder, and actually started to stick.  I got home to find out both boys didn't even sleep for the sitter and had been up playing.  Our sitter went home and I had like 3 places to be at the same time.  Because of the snow I ended up not going to any of the places.  So I bundled the boys up and took them outside to play in the fun but very rare snowstorm!

Sean loved it immediately!  He kept saying he wanted it to snow so that he could eat it.  Smart kid, that was my favorite thing to do as a kid too! ha!

Nolan liked it for a bit, but wasn't a huge fan.

We don't really have snow clothes... especially in California.  I was so glad I had found a fantastic deal on rain boots for the boys for Christmas and got them because at least their feet were covered in something waterproof! Ha!  We have gloves, but they are all the knit kind.  So they ran around with no gloves for awhile before we put the knit gloves on, and those didn't work for very long because they got wet.  Oh well, we were having fun. :)

Sean was so excited to ride his scooter in the snow.  He was really loving it!

If you look closely at Nolan's face, you can see that it was right before he lost it.  His hands were so cold but he refused to keep even warm, dry gloves on his hands.  I actually set him in the back of our Escape with the back door open so he could be out of the snow and he just screamed the whole time. 

I'm sure the neighbors thought I was an awesome mom, because I let him cry for a few minutes to try and finish playing in the snow with Sean.  When I did tell Sean it was time to go in, he started crying too.  Their lack of nap kicked in really quickly.  So I have two screaming, freezing, wet children standing in the garage making it that much harder to get all their cold, wet clothes & shoes off of them.  But I did, and then sent them to bed.  And of course they went straight to sleep :)

By the time the boys woke up from their naps it was dark & we didn't want to go back out.  It was still snowing though, totally beautiful!  I snapped this picture at about 8:00pm (it started snowing around 3:00pm).  You can actually see that the snow was still coming down!

When we went to bed that night we could not wait to wake up and play in the snow again!!