6 Months Back Home

Hal and I have been home from Cambodia for almost exactly 6 months now. Hard to believe we've been home that long.

In the 6 months we've been home we've gone from this:

To This:

We have had the snowiest winter here in Utah that anyone can remember. I've been feeling really cooped up with all of this snow, so last weekeend when we had a big snow storm come through and it literally didn't stop snowing for about 10 hours straight and dumped over a foot I decided to just enjoy it.

Hal's parents were coming home from a cruise so we decided to be nice and shovel their driveway and sidewalks for them, with just a bit of playing in the snow.

Above is the fresh snow on the driveway, and below is the piled up snow that hasn't melted away.

One of the biggest adjustments has definitely been the weather. Hal has been bundling up with thermals while I've been toughing it out, trying to get my body to readjust to the cold.

As much as I hated the humditiy and the heat while I lived in Cambodia. It's days like these, filled with endless cold and inversion that I miss that heat for half a second before I remember the lack of AC and endless sweating.

I think I'll take the snow.

Snowpocalypse

This past week has been a crazy one weather wise. Last week we had a blizzard warning. They made it seem like the most intense storm Utah has ever seen was about to hit town. It made me worried because they weren't letting me leave early. The town was almost shut down by 3. Everything closed early because it was supposed to hit around 4. Well, around 4:30 it went from being sunny to no sun out the west view to by 5, dark ominous clouds rolling in. Man, it looked intense. It started snowing just before I left for work. It was pretty intense driving home, as I was heading right into the heart of it. It was kind of scary, I was going like 35 on the freeway the whole way home. Luckily, I made it home without incident to pick up Hal and head to his parents for our neice's birthday party.

Oh man, it was the wrong time to be heading anywhere. We slid pretty bad twice on the way there, luckily both times we were fine and didn't hit anything other than a curb. We made it to our destination and then...it stopped. All of the snow stopped, and we only got a few inches. What happened to this blizzard they were forcasting? Meh, it was pretty much a normal Utah snow storm. Here is a picture of the backyard when I got home to pick up Hal. It's hard to see anything through the snow.

It seemed like it might be a blizzard at this point, but then the storm petered out and it wasn't much of anything. here's a picture of the backyard when we got home that night.

Not too much snow going on there. But I guess to someone who doesn't live around snow this probably looks like there is a lot of snow. Eh, maybe 3-4 inches. People are calling it the snowpocalypse. The storm that wasn't.

Well, yesterday was the storm that was. It didn't seem like much, but it snowed all day, all day. Just lightly snowed for hours and hours, non-stop, until the roads and everything was covered. We got over a foot of snow in one day. Man, I bet Hal is just itching to go snowboarding again. He went on Friday, before the big storm hit. If we got a foot on the benches of the mountains, I can't imagine how much snow the mountains got. I woke up to this, this morning, and told Hal I was taking his car, since we had cleared it off to drive it on Sunday. This is my car, it had even been cleared off once on Sunday, but the snow just kept coming.

 

Yeah, things have been pretty buried today. Usually Salt Lake City doesn't get too much snow, but man today it's been hard to get around because there is snow pushed up against everything.Yesterday was the storm that was, and well Thanksgiving ended, and Christmas wanted to let us know it's on it's way. We had a fantastic Thanksgiving, I loved having all of the family come into town to visit!

Snow on the trees

Remember when I posted about this tree back in April and about how pretty spring is here in Utah?

Well, here's another example of how pretty utah can be, this one was taken in the fall though...

Well Saturday night I just happened to take a picture of these same two areas in our yard...and well, the scene is a little bit different.

I know that the pictures are kind of hard to see as it was night, and they were just taken with the tiny flash on my phone instead of my camera. The last picture is the one of the pretty wisteria tree. If you can't tell we had a crazy snowstorm here this weekend. It was so windy here for a few days, I was just waiting for the storm to roll in. I heard when it started raining, and then I left to pick up my friend and BAM it was snowing and the ground was already coated. It was so crazy! It snowed pretty much that whole night. We actually got some sun that melted some of it today, but the storm is supposed to continue into tomorrow so I know we're not out of the woods yet.

The craziest part is that I'm loving it. Sometimes I think, who am I? I'm loving this cold snowy weather? What's wrong with me? Well, here in Utah we get a lot of snow so it definitely doesn't feel like the holidays officially until we get some snow. Actually I have a confession to make...this is another 'who am I' moment. I've...I've started listening to Christmas music already. Normally I'm the one that thinks people are crazy, and it's now allowed until after Thanksgiving. But I went to the craft store on Friday and they were playing it, and I was totally into it, and singing along...so I came home and made a Pandora station and listened to it for a few hours...and actually, I'm listening to it right now. I know, I'm crazy! Is it any consolation that I didn't start until less than week before Thanksgiving? And when i talked to Hal he said he had already started listening to it, so I'm not as bad as some crazies.

Isn't the cold weather and snow just so cozy though? It makes Christmas music so hard to resist.