Snow Cone Shootout!

 february has been good to us.  we have been fasting and praying for moisture, and the lord started sending it!  a big, fun snowstorm came on the 2nd weekend.  we stayed home and played in it and worked on some other projects and cleaning.  it even cancelled church for us, but with ben and his excellent winter driving skills (will he still be bragging about this when we're 80?:), we drove into the farmway building and attended the 11th ward sacrament meeting.  bentley took a good look around and saw no one from our ward.  he was quite put out that we had to dress up and come when no one else did:) couldn't we watch 'yukon men' instead, he asked? um, no!

 that weekend, we got together saturday morning for some tubing and sledding down in the draw on the gibbens farm.  all was fun until the brush popped our inner tubes.  bentley could have kept going for hours.  he was up on top of every knoll and rock pile flying down.  uncle brad helped us build a massive snowman and grandma made us some hot chocolate before we went home.  of course, we had to hook the 4-wheeler up and get going crazy on that, only under supervision, with just our familym that afternoon.  our neighbors' dog even joined in on the fun...and we built a snowman in our yard too! ben's juicer came that day, so you can see the carrot juice remnants around the kids' mouths.  more on that later...

 well, then the snow turned into rain.  which we totally appreciate.  however, not the best conditions for skiing.  our wright cousins came over presidents day for some more snow fun.  lisa, blaiz, tylee, bentley, bridon, and i drove up to bogus while ben watched all the little girls!:)  we did some 'snowcone' skiing/snowboarding in the spring like conditions.  it was still fun though!  however, at the end, the giant snowcone started freezing into ice balls...my boys ski a straight line down.  apparently, i missed the teaching them to TURN lesson, so we decided to call it a day before someone hit a tree or a pole or another skier or their own front teeth for that matter!  lots of fun though and the kids loved that they could go up and down the lift and runs by themselves on coach.  we also paid and went on morning star and went on the runs up there.  at our lunch break, a nice special person was cleaning the tables, when he noticed bentley sawing up the puffy cheetohs i had brought like a saw mill.  there was orange dust everywhere...and the poor cleaner guy was a little beyond himself wondering what to do with this kid.  you could tell he just wanted to dust him off!!! it was so funny...he even commented to him about the spillage:)...and offered him a rag and a wipe down.

 now, how could we end a trip without a bang?literally!  tuesday morning the kids had no school and our cousins stayed over with plans to take off at a reasonable time.  i heard the boys up early, as usual.  ok, a little earlier than usual because blaiz was here.  at 6:45, bentley came running in and said they had been shooting bb guns and bridon shot aunt lisa's car window out.  true.  they had all been out shooting guns in the wee hours of the morning without permission.  then we thought emerson peed the bed downstairs.  true....the morning before.  why was the carpet still wet?  oh nothing, but a flood in the basement!  true.  then in all the mountains of laundry, the dryer quit working.  true.  but ben fixed it, although it seems to be on its last leg.  we spent the day cleaning and playing and such and waiting for the window to get fixed.  the boys are splitting most of the cost.  bridon thought he had it made when a fake visa came in the mail with $200 written on it.  Sorry red ryder...you have to earn the cold, hard cash, no fake visas!!!  and no shooting until his birthday.  better than getting chained to the light pole like cousin who'd-you-ma-call-it that loren told me about back in his day.  i guess after shooting the windows out of an old house, this cousin's dad chained him to our light pole out back for the duration of his stay.  intrigued, i asked how he turned out?  too bad he's been in jail and possibly may be dead.  i won't be using that method.  be glad it's only slave labor bridon to work off your shootout!!!  ps.  i keep forgetting to write the funny stuff the kids say, but last nite we read about the famine in ether.  as i was explaining what a famine is, i thought everyone understood.  no rain = no hay = dead cows = no food or milk or anything!  so i asked bridon if he understood.  totally.  'you would just go to the store if that happened...'  i think i have gone wrong somewhere:)!!!