A Day in the Park

Or at, least, an hour or so. Thought we'd take our homework out to the park nearby and enjoy the weather, but it was still a bit chilly in the wind so we didn't last long!

Well, as many of you may have heard in the last couple days, Springfield has been preparing for a major snow storm. Early computer models from three days ago indicated 16-20 inches but later predictions backed off of that total and told us to expect 6-12". However, as the storm drew nearer, they continued to push the heavy snowband further and further away from us and when we went to bed last night, they were predicting 1-3 inches. We were pretty sad because we got excited just to be let down once again. Furthermore, the snow was supposed to begin at 9pm but when I went to bed at 12:30am, there wasn't a single flake falling. Sometime during the night, however, some band of snow popped up out of nowhere and this is what we woke up too...

That's almost 7 1/2 inches! We've never seen anything like this down here! This morning was so reminiscent of snow days from my childhood because Kayla woke me up this morning to tell me that I could go back to sleep because school was cancelled. It was so awesome. Kayla didn't have to go to work either so we slept in till about 9am. Once we woke up, though, we were just too excited to stay inside so we bundled up and headed out into the snow. We decided it was time for us to make our first snowman as a married couple so we grabbed a bag of coal, found a couple large branches in our yard and thus a snowman was born...

We were pretty proud of it. It took quite a bit of work. Here is a picture of me posing with our creation...

Alright, so maybe it is a little smaller then we were originally planning but the snow was way too fluffy to get anything to stick together and this little guy actually took quite a while to make. Next, Kayla decided to make a snow angel but I thought it would be more fun if I buried her. You can tell she's pretty thrilled about it.

We finally got too cold and headed back inside. Mom, does this picture look familiar?

Now I think we're going to make hot chocolate and cookies. Snow days are the greatest. Here are a couple more pictures of the snow just because we thought it looked pretty cool.

Outdoor Adventures

Well Brad and I couldn't wait to take advantage of this beautiful weather! Yesterday we went on a three mile hike with Daniel and Rachel at Busick State Park just north of Branson. Probably the most noteworthy event of the hike was when we heard something rustling around in the brush about 30 feet away... it finally revealed itself to be an armadillo! We had only ever seen them on the side of the road down here, and never alive! Such a weird looking creature! I didn't want to take my camera on the hike, so I'm sorry that I don't have any pics to post.

After getting our taxes done today (our masters accounting program here does them for free- great deal!) we decided to hit a trail that goes through Springfield. It was hard to decide which one to even do... as we started looking in to them we learned that our city has many different well kept trails that go around the city. We decided on a trail that was 7 miles round trip. We walked the first half, then once we got to the turning point we took off jogging. We made it 2 miles before slowing to a walk for a half mile, then ran the last mile. It killed us but we felt so good at the same time! We were joking, though, that one side of our body got more sun than the other- the first half of the trip we walked south the entire time so the right side of our bodies got a lot of sun exposure, but then the on the way back, when the sun was on our left side, we jogged nearly the whole thing. My face looks pretty funny with one side pink but oh well! It was worth it!

Hope you all were able to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather as well!