IOUSes (Icicles Of Unusual Size)

We'll never survive the blizzard!!! Nonsense, you are only saying that because no one ever has! Now that we have four wheel drive and 347 pairs of gloves, we'll be fine. What about the IOUSes? I don't think they exist........

So last Friday night the weatherman said that we'd get between 6 and 24 inches on snow on Monday, but guaranteed 6 inches.

1) He's an idiot on a good day. Friday's aren't good days for him -- well, at least not the ones when he gets picked up for a DUI after work? Yes, it's a SMALL town!!!!
2) between 6 and 24 inches? What kind of a range is that!!!!
3) Guaranteed 6! Come on! It's officially spring! It's not like he's Miracle Max with a chocolate pill!

It was snowing when I left for work Monday am, so I wore a jacket and my winter crocs. Well, I ended up coming home early, because they were closing school early. I was afraid that they would stop plowing my street and I'd be stuck!!!! We did get about 18 inches of snow. Did I mention that it's March!!!!! The winter crocs aren't really that helpful when I've got to go through 6+ inches of snow. The fluffy stuff gets wets, then the toes get cold. I've had to use the foot duvets I keep in my office more than once this week.

The IOUS photo is from Tuesday. Notice that to the right of the house, you can't see the 15 inch elevation change from my flower bed to the grass area -- right below the jog down in the fence. Also note that Rob had shoveled the driveway.

Monday evening I took some photos of the backyard during a brief break in the blizzard. The X thingy is an unfolded folding chair that's been bouncing around the back yard. I'm pretty sure it's still there, but it's currently totally buried.

The first level of the climbing dome is about 20 inches high. This photo was taken before things started drifting! If we'd put a plastic cover over it, we'd have our very own igloo out there!


Monday they let school out early. That actually made sense, the roads were bad, the plows couldn't keep up & it wasn't getting any better.

Tuesday they canceled school. That was dumb! The roads were fine, it wasn't that cold and we don't have any more unused snow days. That means the kids are supposed to go back for 1 Monday in June. Yeah!

Wednesday normal, was kind of warm & we had some good melting.

Thursday -- more snow, but only a few inches. They started school 2 hours late. Why didn't they do that on Tuesday?

It's supposed to warm up a bit for the weekend & then snow again on Sunday. Oh well, Rob is happy that the weather changed the Scout camping plans from a no plumbing outing to a cabin outing.
Other big news:

Cousins Abby & Iris sent Blue Devil shirts! They were SO excited to get a box in the mail!!! When Peter's school had "sports day" right before the SuperBowl, we discovered that Peter didn't have any kind of sports shirt. He's very happy to have one now. They'll both be able to wear their Duke shirts on sports day next year! After all, everyone knows Duke for their sports.....

And......the biggest news of all...........the Pinewood Derby was last Saturday!

The car got started a little late this year, but going over to Uncle Cliff's sped up the process quite a bit. The simple design w/ the LEGO overlay helped as well. Peter's car didn't win the speed race (6th I think??), but it won the Scout's Choice Trophy! Woohoo!!!! His best friend won 2nd place last year AND this year. Peter was very, very happy to get a trophy. This is his first trophy for anything ever! Next year will be his last Pinewood Derby race -- ACK!!!! How did he get so old!

Oh -- and Jeremy likes to take photos. I think he's seen the "I'm a PC and I'm 4 1/2 commercials" too many times. Anyway, I'm going to try to paste a link to a slide show of 100% Jeremy photos. The spell checker must read my blog -- now it won't even pretend that it works.

Iocane Powder -- I'd bet my life on it!

Umm -- six weeks since the last post......yeah -- well, it's been a little crazy around here. I've had the country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it! Oh and The Princess Bride showed up in the DVD rotation. The 20th anniversary edition!!! Inconceivable!

The first photo is of Peter and the Rice Krispy treat bowling alley desert we made for the Blue & Gold Banquet. The gutters are made of brownie -- a little hard to see. The bowling pins were sculpted by Peter & Jeremy out of gum paste and I used food coloring diluted in water to make them blue. I was really wishing that I'd had some vodka to mix w/ the food coloring so that it would dry faster. I've seen them do that on the Food Network, but were were fresh out that day! We used Whoppers for the bowling balls and the bowlers are Little People. This was not nearly as involved as many of the other desserts (since as I mentioned, I've had a few things going on), but somehow we won 1st place. Craziness!! Rob says that he didn't bribe the judge, but......

Peter was also awarded his Bear Rank that day. After looking at this photo, I'm thinking that I could have done my Cousin It imitation the whole day!

We took Helga (aka the Garmin) with us on our California trek. Helga is a little different than the Hertz Neverlost. Helga gets quite disappointed when she has to recalculate. And if she wants you to make a u-turn, she let's you know that without wasting any extra battery life! However, if you happen to be looking for an address in Cedar City on Sage Drive, beware!!! Helga only takes you to Sage Way. It wouldn't be quite so funny, except that we did the little Sage Way vs Sage Drive drama twice! Once on the way down looking for a Radio Shack and again on the way back looking for a BBQ restaurant. We did stumble upon the Radio Shack by accident, but we ended up eating at Chili's.

Helga was good about helping Rob get to the La Brea Tar Pits and the Natural History Museum. The kids had a fabulous time there. However, a couple of mornings Jeremy woke up and told me how his dinosaur toys (can't pass up a gift shop!) came to life when he's asleep. I think he's seen Night At the Museum one too many times!

We also managed to get in some practice at the driving range and a golf lesson. One the way home, we left LA a little earlier than usual and got out of CA much earlier than planned. So, when we got to Utah, we realized that we'd have a few hours to goof off. So, we asked Helga about bowling alleys. There was one in Hurricane not too far away from where we were. Well, it was a little farther than Helga led us to believe, and she didn't tell us to turn left in time & then she was very disappointed as she had to recalculate multiple times and since we ignored her direct orders about U-turns. Anyway, we found the bowling alley a little after six on Friday night. That's a little early for the party crowd, but there were cars in the lot and the sign clearly said open. I don't have any photos because the whole experience was a bit surreal. It really felt like the Twilight Zone. There was definitely a bit of deferred maintenance inside and out.

We were the only customers when we got there, which was a little odd. The employees looked at us a little odd. I think they were surprised to see someone they didn't know. The facility definitely hadn't been updated since sometime in the 80's. The decor was painted neon accents. The computer system at the lanes had the screen with the little green dots. The best part though was that when you got your ball going with any amount of speed, you could hear it bounce off the warps in the lane! Peter developed a technique where he'd throw the ball against the bumper rail and it would zig zag down the lane. Yes, he did get a strike with this technique and yes, he did beat me! Jeremy did a victory dance after every single throw! People started coming in after about an hour, so we had to restrict Jeremy to only dancing in our area. Jeremy only sent his ball down the wrong lane once and the guy in that lane managed to run down the middle of the lanes and grab the ball before it messed up his frame.

I had Peter & Jeremy pick out their clothes to pack for the trip. Jeremy was quite insistent on taking the Jedi costumes to wear to Disneyland. So, they wore them on two days at Disneyland. We had to restrict when they could have the light sabers out so that they didn't injure any bystanders. We did find a quiet area near Small World where they could have a battle. We asked them if they wanted to do the Jedi Training Academy again. They informed us that since they already had completed the Jedi training they did not need to do it again. We watched it as we ate lunch one day and that was just fine with them! Jeremy was Anakin and he decided that Peter was Obi-Wan. He proceeded to call Peter "Master" all day both Jedi days and did what Peter told him to do! I've got to get me a Jedi costume!

Again, the spell checker is completely useless! Why do I bother -- it highlighted zig zag, umm & Garmin, but has no issues w/ Obi-Wan? It is completely impossible for there to be no legitimate spelling errors....sigh....