She was starting to get cold and Wesley wanted to join in on the fun.

Then they were both running and catching the snow.

It was now time to take shelter in their “fort” area.

Here they are going behind the fountain and under the big tree.

Once they got out of their fort  – they still wanted cover from the wet snow.

It would be great if the snow would stick around until Joshua gets home from work.  We really want to sled around the neighborhood together!

 

We woke up today to the unusual, if not totally rare, occurrence of snow in Austin. It started with the typical hard icy rain/snow mix and at first we thought that was that. But then after a bit it really did snow. Real snow. Big flakes that actually stuck to the ground, and get this, accumulated. We had about 1.5 inches of accumulation by midday. It continued to snow the rest of the day, but because it had warmed up it didn’t really stick much after lunch. We did what pretty much everyone else in Austin did. We took full advantage.

Because of doctor’s appointments, sick children and other considerations (not least of which is that no one in Texas can drive if they are even predicting snow) I ended up at home rather than at work today. So Wesley and I had a great time. Jillian was pretty sick and though she came out a couple of times she didn’t have nearly as good a time as we did. We started with a good old fashioned snowball fight.

He really, really liked having snowball fights. Look at his face. He was loving it.

We took a break and made a little snowman. This was before we got most of the snow. It could have been bigger, but served its purpose. He later knocked it off the deck with a couple of snowballs.

This was about as much fun as Jillian would have: standing around near the door and looking before getting cold and going inside.  It took us longer to find her boots and mittens than she was actually outside.

After getting hit with a few too many snowballs we did a bit of cardboard sledding (we don’t actually own a sled) and then played some snow baseball.

After the snow fell a bit more heavily Amber and Wesley made a snowman in the front yard. It was really quite nice, complete with carrot nose and rosemary hair.

Like his smaller brother in the backyard, this snowman was not long for the world. His enemy was not global warming, but a charging Wesley.

It is nice that we finally got a “real” snowfall. It was quite a bit a fun. It gave us an excuse to drink hot chocolate and cider and just have a really good time. Wesley would have stayed out until his arms froze off. Even Redmond, who normally refuses to go out in the cold and wet did his share of playing with us.

I ended up doing more yard work in the snow than I’ve done in nice weather of the last few months. I learned that if you snow covered overhead branches you will get a face full of snow and wet when you least expect it. I also learned that said branches, rather than landing gently on the roof and needing a tug to get them off, will come careening down every which way and you’d better be prepared to move.

 

That’s right.  We got snow. The first in several years for Austin (though they did have some rather large ice storms a couple of years ago).  What makes this even more unusual is that on the 9th, the day the snow fell late in the evening, it was 81 degrees.  A record high.  By the time the snow started falling just before midnight we were at freezing and getting some lovely flurries that I woke Amber up to see.

It wasn’t much, a quarter inch is probably generous, and it had mostly melted by the time the kids got up, but Amber got a few shots of them before they were too cold and had to go in.

And here is Jillian doing her best to clean up the deck. She is very fastidious.

This will likely be it for as long as we live in Texas.  I came home after my morning run to play with the kids, but it was much less impressive in the daylight.  No snowmen. Oh, well.