Happy New Year!

Why didn't I say this on, oh, the actual New Year?  Or at least New Year's eve?


Because New Year's eve, this happened:

And then I promptly ran around for the next two days squealing like a Guinea Pig on crack.


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I noticed the first few flakes when I happened to glance out our living room window.

"BEAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!"  I screeched.

"What?  What's wrong?"

"BEAAAAAAAAAN!!!!  BEAAAAAN!  YOU GOTTA COME HERE, RIGHT NOW!  BEEEAAAAAN!!!!!"

"What's wrong? I'm on the pot, pooping busy doing intelligent, sexy accountant stuff."

"HURRY UP!  COME HERE!   HURRY!  HURRY!!!!"

Only he didn't.

And that's how it came to happen that I nearly broke our bathroom door, slamming it open and startling The Bean as he, uh... "shuffled papers"in the bathroom before he took his morning shower.

He was happy to hear it was snowing, but nearly as excited as I was. 

Not only did he refrain from immediately jumping up and down for joy, he asked me to leave, so he could finish up his, err --- stuff.

Spoilsport.

While he finished his shower and calmly dressed,  I ran about the house driving the children into an absolute frenzy, trying to find all the various pieces of never-been-used,  second-hand winter equipment we'd dragged from California.

Twenty minutes later the four of us managed to spill outside.  The Squid toddled behind us in too-large rainboots that managed to stay on his feet mainly because of the extra pair of socks we'd stuffed down into them.

The DragonMonkey dashed about in his nicely fitting boots, scratching at the slowly accumulating snow with his bare hands. 

Two minutes later he was near tears from the cold on his hands so we improvised with one glove and one slightly dirty-looking woman's sock.

Becky Bean:  bringing the classy all the way to Oregon.

Hey, at least he was able to "make snowfight balls" to his little heart's content.

We expected the snow - which had not even been in the forecast - to die down after a few minutes, but it just kept coming... and coming.... and coming.

By late afternoon we had two inches coating the ground.

I can't think of a better way to have started 2013, can you?

 

(Less than 30 seconds after I snapped these pictures he tried to throw that snow boulder on me.  
I was less than amused.)

Also, for the record - my dog is awesome.

And beautiful.

She's also borderline more intelligent than my children.

Also, shes really, really big for barely turning four months old - she's probably going to be close to 80 pounds when she's done filling out.