Our winter wonderland

It's that time of year-- when snow softly falls and blankets Utah valley in muted white.  Plows scrape their way down the streets and cars with little traction, like mine, slip and slide behind them.  Shovels are brought out from summer hibernation and sidewalks are salted in order to keep that shoveling to a minimum.  Paul slips on his trench coat, purchased for his two wet years in Washington, and heads outside to see what kind of damage he can do to the great expanse of pavement that surrounds our house.  I stay in.  We only have one shovel.  I decide to make soup for my hard working man and I chop vegetables until he saunters through the front door, wet and pink.  I smile at him and tell him the soup will be done soon as he heads to the bedroom to warm up.  I find him on the bed fifteen minutes later dozing, and my cooking is not enticing enough to move his frozen bones to the kitchen.  I rub my warm hands on his chilled arms and kiss his still red nose.  He hesitantly joins me in the kitchen and stares at his warm soup claiming his arms are too tired to lift.  I spoon one bite into his mouth and his arms miraculously find their strength and manage to feed him the contents of the bowl.  I smile and marvel at the simple memory that's just been created.

Friday I got a call from my older sister who told me she wanted to buy us our very own Christmas tree.  We braved Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving and picked out the perfect little tree.  Last night Paul and Tessa and I decorated it and sat it neatly in the corner while a evergreen scented candle burned on the hearth.  (Evergreen scented candles make fake trees seem a little more romantic.)

I pulled out my penguins for their yearly debut and positioned them happily on the couch.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care. . . hoping that I'd be able to afford real stalking holders in the years to come.  Those lightweight clocks weren't going to hold very well.  (Little did I know that my grandmother had already sent some Christmas money which my mom used for this very purpose.)

The table was outfitted with its festive duds while David Archuleta sang from my laptop carols of Christmas, snow and angels.  Everything felt perfect except it hadn't snowed yet.  I woke this morning to that surprise.

After soup, Paul and I went outside to build a snowman, savoring our last few moments as a family of two.

We decided to build a snow princess, but the more we sculpted the more we realized that it wasn't the best snowman snow.  We packed all around her body and sprayed her with mists of water, strawberry scented from the perfume that owned the bottle previously.  We chiseled and smoothed, added snow and took some away.

But the snow was hardening and she wasn't looking very much like a princess.

In fact, she was beginning to resemble African war masks. . .

Combined with an elderly samurai pioneer woman.

(Which I will tell my kids was exactly what we were going for.)

She turned out pretty scary.

But she was our creation, and I was proud!

Here we are as one big happy family.  I "photoshopped" myself into the picture, and by "photoshopped" I mean I used Paint because I don't have Photoshop on my laptop. :)