Thursday, February 26, 2009

Snake!

I went outside to talk to Jay and was greeted with this:



Before I had the presence of mind to get the video going, Annie talked to the snake explaining that our house was not the place for it. As soon as she talked to it, it turned around and went back to the rocks. The kids think it is a gopher snake, which is not a bad thing to have in the yard. But it would be a horrible thing to have in my house!

Monday, February 16, 2009

Snowmen and Belly Busters

As I promised in the last post, I went out to watch the sledding. Tim asked the concierge at the hotel where the best sledding is and we were told that the "locals" go to the Cardinals' practice field. Our regular readers will remember we went there last summer to watch the Cardinals.


As you can see, it was pretty crowded, although not as crowded as the official snow park on the north side of Flagstaff (we tried going there last year on Presidents' Day weekend and had to leave because the wait was too long just to park the car -- and there's substantially more snow this year).

Jay says that he has become an "adrenaline junky." This is his pose just before the video below.


I was actually planning on trying this hill out until Tim told me the following story. After I took Annie and Michael to a more sedate part of the sledding area, Tim decided to sled down along with Jay. He had watched Jay several times and decided that if they went down a certain way, he wouldn't catch any air and it would be fun. They started down together fine, but suddenly Tim couldn't see Jay anymore and saw that he had veered to the left and was heading toward a ramp. He couldn't stop and became airborne. He hit the frozen tundra headfirst, much to the delight of the crowd on top of the hill. Then, a small child on a toboggan ran over his crumpled body. As he listened to the cheers of viewing audience, he checked to see he still had all of his teeth. Jay assured him that no blood was in evidence, and, aside from a small cut on the inside of his lip and a bruised chin (and ego), he's none the worse for the adventure.


Michael ventured off while all this was happening to start on his snowman project. Here, he's standing by his biggest snow character.

As always, Annie has to be the queen of something and this time it was "Queen of the big Snowball."

These are some of Michael's smaller characters. I think he built 15 of these.

It's a little hard to make out, but, apparently, the fifteen little guys were chasing the big guy, screaming, toward a precipice.

After the sledding adventure, we headed out to our favorite downtown restaurant, San Felipe's. Unfortunately, it was closed "Until Further Notice." We decided not to wait and ended up at a nice Indian Restaurant. The day was cloudy again, so we did not end up going to the observatory.

Tim and the kids got up this morning and went to the sledding area again while I packed up and got us ready to go home. Everyone is already talking about staying in Flagstaff next summer again!

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Playing in the Snow

We're in Flagstaff again, but the weather is much different from the last time we were here!



This is the view from the hotel room, where I'm spending most of my time. Tim and the kids are out in it, though.








Annie is quite the winter fashion plate. Notice the pink camo boots!



Yes, you read right. 9 degrees Fahrenheit. The kids have never been so cold.


A Flagstaff vacation is not complete without breakfast at Denny's. I'm not sure what Jay is making a face at in this photo, though.

I'm going to go out to watch the sledding today. If it's clear, we'll go to Lowell Observatory, but it doesn't look good. Maybe it will snow a bit tonight and the kids can see it.