The Great Texas Snowstorm of 2014

Snow is not unheard of in this part of Texas, but it is uncommon.  So when I started hearing reports that we might see some snow on Thursday night I didn't get my hopes up.  

During dinner we noticed some tiny round ice balls start falling outside. 

We were all pretty excited about the "snow."  I took this picture to document that it had accumulated enough on our neighbors roof that we could see it.  

There was also "quite a bit" in our sand table.

We figured that was all we could expect and so we sat down to watch a movie.  When the movie ended Brandon looked outside and discovered that snow completely covered the ground!  Of course it had to be the one night that we were lazy and parked the Honda in front of the house.    

It was only about 7:30 at night so the kids and I hurried to find our snow stuff.  Luckily most of it was still accesable because I'd been to lazy to fully put it away after we got home from Utah.

The kids had lots of fun walking around making foot prints in the snow.  Charlotte liked the "sparkelies by the light."

Derrick didn't really know what to make of the snow.  But he liked being outside.

We'd borrowed a lot of winter gear when we were in Utah.  But we still had one heavy winter coat and one dressy winter coat for the girls.  We also had hats and gloves for the kids.  So they were warm enough for a quick walk.  We tried to go up to the mail box,  but a stiff breeze started blowing and we all wimped out.  So we turned around and went home.  

Brandon went out and shoveled snow after the kids went to bed.  Funny story about this snow shovel.  We've never bought a snow shovel.  When we changed apartments in Bountiful we were given a snow shovel by the apartment management because we were on the bottom floor.  We were supposed to be in charge the little sidewalk by our back porch.  Well we never had to use it because we moved down there in March.  When Brandon went to basic training we gave the shovel to our neighbors because they had a daughter in a wheel chair and would need to shovel snow more that I would.

I don't know how, but somehow that shovel must have ended up back on our porch.  Because when the moving van showed up in Texas with our stuff, that shovel was included.  I laughed about it, put the shovel in the garage, and completely forgot it was there.  That is until a year later when it was finally needed.

Of course, need is a strong word because the snow never got deeper than about half and inch.  It didn't even cover our grass.

Before we went to bed on Thursday night Brandon recieved a text message from his team leader.  Physical Training (PT) was cancelled and Brandon didn't have to go to work until 9:00.  (Usually he has to be there at 6:00.)  Later the first call was moved to 11:00.  And then they just decided to close all of Fort Hood for the day so Brandon didn't have to go to work at all.

All my facebook friends had fun posting pictures of the snow and mems like this one.

The kids wanted to go out in the snow again after breakfast.  So we spent forever getting them into their sow stuff again.  Once again I was so grateful that we don't normally have to get everyone into gloves, hats, scarves, coats, socks, and shoes every time we leave the house.  Charlotte was so funny and insisted on bringing her "purse" with her.

Everything was covered in ice and was really slippery.  It was obvious why everything had to be shut down.  This area just doesn't have the infrastructure to take care of snow and ice.  They don't have snow plows that remove the snow and then salt the roads.  They do have trucks that spray sand on bridges to keep them from icing, but that's about it. There were numerous car crashes caused by cars slipping on the ice.

Derrick wasn't exactly thrilled about the whole ice thing.  I think he wanted to go back inside the house as soon as we walked outside.  But I wasn't going to let the 10 minutes I spent wrestling him into winter clothes go to waste so I made him stay outside.  He was okay walking around as long as I held his hand.

We walked up to the mail box and made it this time!  We passed deer prints on the way there.  I knew we had a lot of deer in this area, but I didn't realize they came this close to the houses.

A little bit later we saw some rabbit tracks and had fun following them around in the snow.

And then we were all done with the snow.  It was about 26 degrees outside.  My face started hurting from the cold.  So we went inside and enjoyed hot chocolate.

We spent the rest of the day inside.  It's really the first time I've felt trapped in our house.  The roads were too dangerous to travel on so we couldn't go anywhere, and it was too cold to go have any fun outside in our neighborhood.  It was great to have Brandon home -especially since he's leaving so soon, but by the end of the day we were all completely sick of each other.

Still it was a fun little experience.  And it confirmed that Texas has turned me into a cold weather wimp.  Because I totally related to this meme.  (HEB is a grocery store here.)      

P.S. It was back up to 70 degrees today.  Yes, you can be jealous.