It's still winter - literally and figuratively

So you know how I finished my last post about how I was hoping that we'd a nice bit of good news that would make it feel like summer time again?

Well the next day we had a horrific snow storm.  

That kind of set the tone for the week.  

It snowed all night on the 22nd and when we woke up on Monday the 23rd there was over a foot and a half of snow outside. Brandon's parents usually are out the door for work by the time we start getting out of bed.  But they were still home when we all got up.  Brandon's dad just took the whole day off.  Brandon's mom tried to go to work a little bit later, but traffic was backed up pretty bad in the canyon so she just gave up.  I don't have work on Monday's anyway so I didn't have to worry.  The kids' school had a 2 hour delay, but since their classes are only half day anyway we decided that it was a snow day.  

About mid-morning we decided to go have fun in the snow as a family.   

 Derrick loves sliding down the hill that leads to the basement door.  He slid over and over again.

 This is a picture of Brandon's dad's little white truck.  Or at least what is showing of it.  It doesn't run and it's been parked by the garage since we moved in before Thanksgiving.  We'll probably see it again in the spring.

 Brandon and I made a big circular fort for the kids to play in.  They liked crawling on the walls.

 The funny thing is that the base of the fort is built on solid snow that was already about two feet above ground level.

 I decided to make a snow man. It didn't take very long to roll the balls.  Later Charlotte and Jacque went outside and added a nose, eyes and a scarf.

 Here's Charlotte standing on a swing seat that is usually about 2 feet off the ground.

 Derrick went to the garage door and started asking for "boat."  I figured out that he wanted a sled.  So I got that out for him.  He had a lot of fun sliding on that.  I love his little happy face in this picture.

It was snowing again when we came back inside.  I think it snowed at least another foot during the rest of the day.

On Tuesday the kids had a real snowday.  School was cancelled for all the students in the Valley because the roads were so full of snow that non of the buses could navigate.

I had work that day so I left Brandon at home to figure what to do with the kids for a second snow day.

At work I heard all the crazy stories about the snow from the day before.  Many people had been stuck in the parking lots after a day on the mountain.  One of the roads off the mountain had been closed at about 6:00 pm so a few employees had had to sleep over in the lodge on Monday night.

Work was pretty busy for us on Tuesday because everyone in the valley was taking advantage of the snow day.

At the end of work I took this picture of the road down to the parking lot.  The snow hills on the side of the road were easily 10 feet tall.

 On Wednesday we went to a birthday party for our niece Oakley.  Brandon took the kids over there at dinner time and I met up with them after work.  Melanie lives in one of the more rural parts of this already rural valley and the levels of snow around her house were insane.  Driving down her street felt like Luke Skywalker flying around the Death Star.

On Thursday we got an extension to our figurative winter.   Brandon heard back from the job where he'd interviewed.  They had decided to hire from within.  They encouraged him to apply again in the future, which was good, but it didn't do much to help in the short term.

If you remember from a few posts ago here are our options for different career scenarios.

1. Brandon gets a job in airport operations.
2. Brandon gets a job with the FAA.
3. Brandon gets a job with FEMA.
4. I find a good paying, full time job and Brandon stays home with the kids permanently.
5. Brandon goes to flight school for a third time, and gets commercially rated in either airplanes, helicopters, or both.

Our best prospect for Option 1 wasn't happening.  Options 2 and 3 are off the table for the time being thanks to President Trump's federal hiring freeze. Option 4 has the potential to be happening, but I still think Brandon could get a higher paying job than me at the current time. And so suddenly we are looking at option 5 like it's a good idea. In theory the VA will pay for flight school, and Brandon is actually very close to a commercial airplane rating it could work out.  

But flying in the winter is kind of an iffy situation.  So for now we are still playing the apply for airport operations jobs and wait game.  

There was one nice little silver lining to the whole not hired thing. 

I didn't have to leave my job yet!

If Brandon had been hired I would have had to leave my job (the commute would have been too hard on either one of us to somehow both work) and felt really bad about leaving Snowbasin in a lurch in the middle of the winter season.  Now I can continue to stick around until the season ends in April.

In case I haven't mentioned it lately.  I LOVE my job.  And I'm pretty awesome at it.  My boss has told me that having me work there is one of the best things that happened to her while she's been with the company. She likes how quick I learned all the processes and procedures.  I have to add that she's really good at training.  She'll show me the things I need to know and then leave me alone to figure it out.  She's also good at letting me make mistakes and then teaching me how to correct them. (And learn how to avoid them in the process.)  I'm so glad I have this job. 

Employee appreciation week was going all all week and on Thursday they had a little dinner and free skiing on the Little Cat Lift for all family members.  Brandon brought the kids up and met me after work.  Here they are standing in front of the Moose Statue in front of the buildings.

Of course we weren't going to ski, but we were allowed to ride the ski lift up and then back down.  Little Cat doesn't go all the way up the mountain - it only has 7 towers and only takes about 3 minutes to get to the top.  But the kids were so excited to ride it.  Even Derrick kept pointing and saying "I want that." Veronica was afraid to ride it so I stayed down with her while Brandon took the older kids.  When they got back the kids all yelled about how fun it was and wanted to ride it again.  So I went with them.  Here's Lydia's happy face while we went up the mountain. 

I quickly remembered that I do not like ski lift type rides.  I kept hold of Derrick's hand - not because he needed it - but because I was so scared. 

When we got to the top we all had to put our feet up while we went over the stop gate.  Then we started going down.  The wind was blowing directly on us and it was SOOOOOO cold.  I felt like I was going to get a brain freeze from the cold. 

There were people snowboarding on the hills below us.  Charlotte and Lydia would yell, "Hello" and the people would wave back.  The girls also laughed every time they saw someone fall.

When we got down Brandon said, "it's worth having you work here so that we could ride on that!"  The kids agreed.  

I took this picture on Friday morning.  It shows our fort and snowman covered with more snow.  Seriously, it just keeps snowing here. 

On Friday after work I saw one of the snow grooming machines driving straight up one of the ski trails.  It was so crazy to watch it drive up the steep slope.  

On Saturday we went to the Jordan World Circus. The kids had been given free tickets to the circus at school. and we figured we might as well go. Derrick loves the movie Dumbo right now so I asked him if he wanted to see some Circus Elephants.  He said yes and then spent the next week asking us to "go see Circle Elephants."  So that sealed the deal.

We got there early so we could get good seats.  That was a good plan except I didn't anticipate how much extra stuff we'd be pressured to buy.  There were vendors selling cotton candy, snow cones, funnel cake, etc.  Charlotte seriously cried for over half an hour when we told her we weren't spending $5 on cotton candy.

She was also pretty upset that we weren't going to pay $15 for an elephant ride or $10 for a pony or camel ride.

Charlotte wasn't the only one crying.  Lydia shed her share of tears. And Veronica got overwhelmed by the sound and the noise and cried a little bit.  Surprisingly Derrick didn't cry much. But that didn't mean he didn't get overwhelmed.  We'd brought his little blue security blanket and he put that over his head and stayed under there most of the time.  We got a few weird looks, but I didn't care because the fact that he wasn't screaming was actually HUGE progress.

I'll admit for a while I was thinking that this circus was a huge rip off.  Sure we'd had "free" kid tickets, but we'd still had to pay $18 for Brandon and I.

But then it started.  And I was pretty amazed by the whole thing. I've never been to a circus before so I was just like a little kid watching all the acts.  I could have taken pictures of everything, but I only took a few.  Here's a lady climbing up a pole that is balancing on a man's shoulder.

 Another time she climbed up and rode a bike around up there.

Another part of the show had a couple do an aerial silk act together. I didn't get a clear picture of this, but the hashtag should be #relationshipgoals.

 Towards the end of the show it was time for the Elephants to come out.  Brandon made sure that Derrick took his blanket off his head for this part.  He liked it.

 Everyone had loved the circus.  I don't know if we'll do this every year, but we will definitely come back again.

After it was over we went to McDonalds for dinner.  The kids played on the play place for a long time.

On Monday Derrick got to do another thing that he'd been talking about for weeks.  We got to go on "a big, long train ride."  He earned this by wearing underwear every day for 10 days.  Brandon and I were shocked at how "quickly" Derrick potty trained.  Sure it took him 4.75 years, but once he decided that he was ready for underwear did it perfectly.  He's seriously only had a couple of accidents.

So after school on Monday I took Derrick down to the Front Runner station in Ogden.  We got on the train and rode it ALL the way down to Provo.  That took two hours.

 Then we waited about 40 minutes before the train went back up to Ogden.  Derrick was glued to the window the whole time.  Every time we stopped he'd say, "I want to go faster."  He liked watching other trains go by.

I spent most of the time reading "America's War for the Greater Middle East." (You can read my review on Goodreads.)  I was only about 2/3rds of the way through when we started our ride, but I finished it by the end.

Towards the end of the ride we started talking to a man on the train.  He found out how far we'd gone that day and why we were doing such a special trip.  He gave Derrick a Trax pin.  Derrick thought it was so great and has worn it ever since.

As soon as we went to the door to get off the train Derrick looked up at me and said, "Mommy, I want more train."

We've started telling him that he can go on a big long train again when he can read.

Well that's pretty much sums up this week.  Oh there's also been a whole lot of political stuff going on.  But that's the subject of another post that may or may not get written depending on whether or not I want to keep most of my friends.

Tomorrow is Ground Hog Day.  Hopefully we'll have news that this winter is coming to an end soon. At this point I'll take either a literal or figurative spring.

P.S. We have some foreign cashiers at work who are awesome. Today I overheard one of the american cashiers trying to explain Groundhog Day and the movie Groundhog Day to one of the foreign cashiers.  It was one of the funniest conversations I've ever heard.  By the end of it we all decided that Americans have some pretty strange traditions.