White Christmas?

In Texas? Who would have thought?

The day before Christmas eve in the Dallas Fort Worth area, I was regretting having only packed my heavier clothes for forecasted 30s and 40s in Colorado (Where we would be headed after Christmas) and lighter winter clothes for the forecasted 60s in Texas. Why? Because it was 76 degrees and I was a little hot!

Have you ever heard the expression, "If you don't like the weather in ___ (insert which ever state the person is from), just wait five minutes!" The story is always accompanied by crazy weather stories to which the hearer feigns interest- not because they're not interested, but because they are thinking of the even crazier weather stories from the places they've lived. Well here is a story I'm adding to my list. The day after it was 76 degrees, on Christmas eve, it snowed! In the exact same spot it was 76 the day before! And it wasn't your normal, 'It snowed in Texas- there's an eighth of a centimeter on my car' kind of snow. This was a good blanketing snow that thoroughly excited me, made Jake sigh and Abigail pleasantly happy, not knowing how good of a thing she was getting. Over the next two days, we had an all out snowball fight with cousins, made snow angels, ate snow, and built a few snowpeople. Ahhhh... how nice.

(mid snow"ball" throw)

(Gramma checking out the view)



(decked out with her new umbrella. BTW- isn't the clarity of this picture awesome? This is thanks to the new lens that Jake and my mom got me. THANKS!)

The snow was almost totally gone on the day after Christmas, the day we were leaving for Colorado. Jake checked all the road conditions and even looked at live video of a few places along the way for our trip and everything looked good. Well, not too far out of Dallas Fort Worth, we hit snow and ice on the road. A lot of snow and ice. We're talking 2-3 inches of ice and everything covered in snow. We were going 10-15 mph and passed quite a few cars abandoned in the snow. It was a little crazy. There wasn't much we could do but follow the car in front of us and pray to get out of the ice safely. Two hours later, we did.

(this picture doesn't show the dramatic whole-road-covered-in-ice part.. but you can see a couple of abandoned vehicles!)