See that photo? It was taken a few days ago… today’s high is supposed to be 55 and a low of 27.
Welcome to Austin!
I guess I’d better turn on the heater now, we’ve had the A/C going since March!
So, my kids are Webkinz freaks. Especially Cassie.If you don’t know what those are, count your blessings. They are basically stuffed animals. BUT they each come with a code. If you enter the code into their website, you can start an account and play with your animals online and add them to your account so you have a house with a bunch of Webkinz. I think Cassie has something like 19 of these things.
When you buy one of these overpriced stuffed animals, it comes with one year of service. So, by my math, that means my kid should have like nineteen years of Webkinz time, right?
Um. Not so much. It only gives you one year from the time you enter the code. So you have to buy (or enter a code) at least once per year. It’s not even the point that my kid won’t get at least one per year. She’s obsessed and when she’s not obsessed, she won’t buy them anymore or care about the online thing. It’s not the point, it’s kind of a rip off.
But that’s the rule and if you look under Account Expiration on the FAQ page, you will see it.
Just kind of lame. Having said that, they did help a friend out when they had a house fire earlier this year. I’m still annoyed though.
I’m sure everyone was sick of me giggling and acting like a crazy person on my social networks yesterday. You have to realize that this is the first time I’ve ever seen snow that was enough to even make a snowball. I grew up near Charleston, SC then moved to Honolulu, HI and now am here in Central Texas. My mother has a photo of me in the snow. I was probably 5 or 6, but I don’t remember it.
But this… this was COOL. At 7am, I was picked up by a friend, we were going to go downtown to a meeting and come back before it started getting nasty. Heh, Yeah, we made it less than 5 miles in 45 minutes so turned around and had breakfast together, where we sat by a window and watched the sleet turn into big fat snowflakes.
I think that was the coolest thing, I didn’t realize that snowflakes get that big, it was like fluffy quarters falling from the sky.
The kids were allowed outside a few times yesterday, but well… as you see, I went and got them a couple of hours early. The snow was looking melty and well, I wanted to play 
It snows here once every 8 years or something, I doubt they missed much.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Poor kids, we made them come in every 20 minutes or so, their little hands were red. We simply don’t have winter gear here. *laughing* We put socks (went through a LOT of pairs too) on their hands, but it was wet snow, so it only helped a little. We did find some gloves for Cassie eventually, but they got wet too. Jamie insisted on wearing shorts after his pants got wet from snow. Cassie even got to make a snow angel. How fun is THAT?
Anyway, some photos… I have more, but my card reader won’t turn on and I can’t figure it out (where’s my tech guy???)
After the kids and I got home, I took a quick call (while the kids made a mini snowman and played), we had a snowball fight (which I lost MAJORLY), Cassie and I made a little snow person family on my windshield
The kids HAD to eat snow too. Just required. Nope, not yellow 
By the time Tom made this with Cassie and the girl next door, it was mostly sleet bound together with snow and a little melty, but they did it! We also weren’t prepared for snowmen so the hair was from Halloween a few years back, the scarf is one a friend made me (thanks, Dy!), the mouth and nose were cheetos, the eyes were hershey’s kisses and the buttons were M&Ms. *laugh* Hey, do what you gotta do!
The school started 2 hours late this morning, so we got up 30 minutes late (Jamie has TONS of homework/corrections to do before Friday, poor kid). Tom made eggs and bacon and we enjoyed watching the snow start to melt.
It’ll be 55 today and 60 tomorrow. Ahhh… Austin.
I’m so weak.
Took kids outta school early for… Uh… Doc appt?
One quick client call and them I’m totally in on the snowball fight (we can actually make a few!)
And yes those are socks on their hands… we don’t have mittens cuz ya know… it’s Austin, for crying out loud!
I live in Anderson Mill (way NW Austin). I realize those of you up North thing we are all crazy. If it snows even a little bit, we all start to lose our marbles, but it’s so pretty and I’ve only seen snow a few times – never stuck or anything. Not sure if it’s going to stick today, there’s a lot of water/sleet on the ground, but it is GORGEOUS falling down, big fat flakes. The video doesn’t do it justice. Kinda wish the kids were home to enjoy it…
That noise is water in the rain gutters… lotsa sleety rain this morning before the purdy snow hit.
Update: Took another one when it started coming down harder… wondering if I can sneak out with my camera…
Earlier today I shared this on Facebook, but figured I’d give the full run down of “what the heck” I meant…
~My husband and I have the weirdest conversations, “No, the dead lady, the one that we think really is dead this time… she’s the one having the roof work done”….. “OMG, did you see her outside? I’m pretty sure she did really die this time.” (yeah, that’s a long weird story)~
So yeah… what? Early last year, Tom told me that the neighbor behind us had died, he had talked to someone out in the yard and that’s what they said. We talked to her a few times when she was watering her grass or whatever, but we weren’t “friends” I guess. I said “oh, how sad” and on we went… about 2 months later, I get up on a Saturday and look out the window… the dead lady is watering her grass. Apparently, she’s back! So I go wake up Tom, who comes into the kitchen and we’re staring at her. He’s saying maybe it’s her sister, but no, it’s her.
What the hell, right? Zombie neighbors!
Apparently, her husband died I guess and she was staying with family. Um… okay.
So… late Summer Tom once again says she has died, he talked to her son who comes and mows her lawn (and can I say that I hope my son one day loves me enough to come mow my lawn and do nice stuff for me *ahem*Jamie*ahem*). I’m not sure if I believe him and if that zombie bitch comes back again, I swear I might go stake her.
Um. I’m kidding. (Mostly)
So yeah, the house is not “the neighbor behind us” – it will always and forever be the “not really dead lady’s house”. Gah, I hope my kids don’t hear us saying crap like that. Now to get one of my friends to buy it LOL
I realize I will came off as a little snotty about the books thing in my post tomorrow, so let me first just show you the bigger picture… he tells me we are going to clean his office and I get to help soon, I’ll post “after” pictures…
Until then…
So… is it just me or is that just crazy? In his defense, he’s got lots of little projects going on, but if he’d FINISH them… well… *laugh* — and his carpet is NASTY. We clean it and it gets spots again. I want to rip it out and put in tile or something. I keep saying that once he’s out of school full time, working part time, working with me part time, plus dealing with all kinds of other random stuff… sigh… I think I just need to take a shovel to this room, actually.
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We have some major root going on here, folks. I took this a couple of weeks ago… I keep waiting for the sprout thing to come up so we can watch it grow and pinch it back and then plant the stupid thing in a planter. I wonder why it’s not dead yet? LOL. It’s still hanging in there. The seed is completely in half now so we can’t even really move it, thus the water is getting gross. I’m not real sure what to do about it actually. So far, ignoring it seems to be working.
No. I’m not making that headline up. Tom smokes (bad boy, bad bad bad) on the front porch and he comes in from watering the hanging plants while he was out there and he’s wet. Apparently he was merrily watering away when he got poured water on a momma bird that had built a nest in our begonias. Momma bird didn’t like that gave him a bit of a bath. Poor plant… he’s been trying to water it a little from the side to keep it alive, but we don’t want to disturb them. He noticed when he was out there, a daddy bird bringing stuff back to the nest and late last week, he heard little “meep meep meep” sounds. Sure enough, the momma’s babies hatched. I made him take the basket down so I could take pictures. We were fast so the parents didn’t notice and were careful not to touch anything. Now he’s been watching them bring the babies food back and forth at dawn and dusk. It’s been really cool. I can’t wait until they leave so we can take the nest down and show the kids! Here’s pics of the babies… they still have fuzz! You have to look close because they are DEEP down in this plant and we didn’t wanna touch anything too much… but it’s right in the middle of the picture… and as always you can click for a bigger picture. I left it so you could see how they built this nest a little… it’s like sideways or something. LOL. It’s just weird.
