How to have a SNOWDAY in a concrete jungle.

It snowed! Sydney kept trying to eat it by sticking her tongue out - even though it wasn't getting anywhere near her face due to the overhanging walkway above us. We grabbed the 'shubble' as Syd calls it (I don't have the heart to correct her - I'll tell her on her first day if Kindergarten:) & she helped me pretend to shovel and ice the walkways at the Coronado.

    

 

We made to the main decks and got distracted. When it does snow here, mother nature doesn't mess around. It dumps and it sticks! So we played around in the snow for a while and made a snowman. He was more like a Snowgodzillaman or Kermit the Snowfrog. He's ugly, but my daughter is not the shallow type and they were best friends for a couple of minutes. 

I gave frosty the awesome tie but Syd made the eyes and the tiny top-hat with a feather in it. His life was short. The sun came out just long enough to melt his face off then disappeared again for probably two more months. Dad and Cameron were inside watching football and eating paper-towel rolls. I couldn't leave my little buddy out, so here is one of him:

UPDATE: We had another snowday today. Cameron's first time in the snow and Sydney's second or third. Seattle was expecting 6-12 inches of blizzard and got it. There is probably more to come so don't be surprised if you get a second update with sledding pictures. Today we just stayed inside and manned the building. Since Seattle doesn't invest in any snow plows & the city is so hilly, everyone stays home from school and work and the whole city shuts down. It's really fun but SO COLD.  Here are a few more pictures - I would love to take a good photo of the city covered in white from Kerry Park but know that I would just slide all over the place trying to get there and would never make it without wrecking. Once again we had to Shovel the building we manage (by we I mean Shane shovels; we kick around in the snow piles) Shane and Sydney re-built frosty the snow-frog into frosty the princess & came inside and had hot chocolate to make it official.

Vegas Baby, Vegas!.....and Christmas

The Leopard Family started their vacation with a no-kids-allowed Las Vegas trip. Shane and I dumped the kids in Phoenix with their grandparents and drove up to sin city for two days & nights. We took a wrong turn thinking we remembered how to get there off the top of our heads from phoenix and ended up in flagstaff. SO we got to drive through someone else's white Christmas! It was awesome and for about 10 minutes we wanted to move there.

Then we got to the COSMO. We intended for undisturbed sleeping, eating, shopping, shenanigans and more sleeping. We totally got it. We stayed at the Cosmopolitan in a fantastic room with THE greatest view of the strip. All other hotels are ruined for me. This place was that cool. When we weren't in our room talking about how we wanted our house to 'look this rad' we were Christmas shopping, or playing casino WAR. Then every time we went out we couldn't wait to go back to our room and stare at it some more. I snapped this from our balcony to remind me that I needed to leave a ridiculous yelp review for the hotel when I got home. I dig it. I wish I would have taken more of the inside of the hotel itself. It's a photographer's dream. Lazy me. Here's a couple of the room. Love it.

Vegas was nice but short and we were headed back to family in AZ. Here are some pictures from Christmas of all the festivities. There was the annual white elephant gift exchange at the Leopard house consisting of thigh-masters, superman underwear and lots of chocolate.

(photos had to be censored for modesty, grandma isn't blushing because joe left his pants on.) We ended the night with party games. In an exciting game of "I've never" Grandma Cox admitted she's never jumped over the moon and Scott proves how bad he is at guessing people's weight. It was awesome. In the morning, Santa left Sydney a few presents a note telling her she was a good girl and she had few things to look forward to when she got back to Seattle. (doll-houses are hard to fly home) Sydney had a blast with her cousins and ate sugar like it was her first time. Someone flew a toy helicopter into poor grandmas head and I'll get my hands on that video if it kills me. After Christmas The Hamilton family and the Leopard Family had a massive

Kickball/wiffleball/football tournament and the weather was fantastic. Something like 77 degrees. I didn't hate Arizona for about a half hour. Then My allergies kicked in - and the deadly virus that Arizona provides my family with every visit. Its good to be home.