A Snowy Saturday

I got up really early this morning and headed to Sears to buy a new Christmas tree. They had the one I wanted on sale today only, and I was determined to buy it and get it put up this evening. Well, I happened to look outside while I was drying my hair and noticed that we had snow...a lot of snow...on the ground. We got about 4 inches overnight. Determined, I set out for the mall despite the snow. It was pretty treacherous! I finally arrived at Sears and was incredibly disappointed to find they didn't have the tree I wanted. Seems that their delivery trucks got stuck in the same blizzard we did last week and they didn't receive their inventory. I was so frustrated, especially after getting up at 6am and braving the elements. So I drove home and went to Sears.com and ordered my tree for the sale price...and free shipping. I wish I had just done that in the first place. I usually get my tree up the day after Thanksgiving, so I feel very behind this year. I keep telling myself that it will get done...eventually.

We decided to go ahead and leave for Denver despite the snow. We went to Cherry Creek mall to visit the Narnia Snow Globes and to see Santa Claus. We'd never been to this mall before but we will go back. It was awesome! Abbey and Sarah sat on Santa's lap and each gave him a lengthy wish list. I wish I could have heard what they were saying because they were so animated while talking to him! Will couldn't be talked (or even bribed) into it, but I bought a cute picture of the girls with Santa Claus. The Narnia exhibit was pretty cool too. We entered the giant snow globe through two wardrobe doors and it cooled off and started snowing inside. Everyone was walking around the mall with fake snow on their hair and clothes...funny. They also had some smaller snowglobes that had interactive figures and scenes from the movie in them. I thought it was pretty neat. Some smart marketing execs spent a lot of money to draw people to their mall this season. The picture of the kids at the top of the page was taken in the snowglobe...can you see the snow??

After we left the mall, we went to LoDo (which is lower downtown Denver). It was really too cold to walk around and shop, but we made a few stops before heading home. We were really glad we left Denver when we did because we ran into some bad weather coming home. It took us an hour to drive the last 6 miles home because of icy roads. It was snowing when we left our house this morning, and I don't think it stopped all day. We came home to about 9 inches of snow in our driveway. The altitude where we live is about 7000 feet. That is almost 2000 feet higher than Denver, and maybe 700-800 feet higher than Colorado Springs. So, once we got close to home, things got pretty dicey! It was an hour of white-knuckle driving at less than 5mph. Let me just tell you those last few miles home were really, really long ones. One really neat thing to mention is that we saw the Oscar Meyer Weiner-mobile! While we were stopped on the interstate, it passed us. It happened too quickly for the kids to notice, but I thought it was hilarious. I can't remember ever seeing it before...pretty cool!

It had stopped snowing in Denver by the time we got there this morning, but the trees all over town looked so beautiful. I took this picture of trees in Pulaski Park on the way to the mall. The picture doesn't capture the beauty of the scene, but maybe those of you in Arkansas can at least be reminded of what snow looks like! We watched the news this evening and snow is in the forecast for 4 of the next 5 days. It's not supposed to be above freezing until Thursday of next week! Brrrrr!