Woo Hoo we have Snow, snow, SNOW!!!

We woke early to snow. Everyone was up and eating breakfast by 6:30 and out the door playing in the snow by 7:00. 

They. Were. Excited.

It wasn't even light out yet! 

I brought out the camera and was happy I did because I loved the effect of the blurry snow falling. 

I have been praying for snow/rain for months because we desperately need the moisture out here. It snowed all morning and we made the most out of it. 

The kids and I all bundled up right after breakfast and played for over an hour before we needed hot chocolate and popcorn to warm up. After a movie we bundled up again before lunch for more fun time. 

I was so excited to see the snow this morning because it was sticking to the ground. We've had a few snow flurries during December but the horizontal winds blew all the snow, I desperately wanted to fall in my garden, straight to Oklahoma. 

In fact the snow we had a couple weeks ago, weathermen were actually calling for blizzard conditions which made me think, being that I grew up in Indiana and all, that we'd be getting a foot of snow. In reality the snow we received barely covered the ground because the 50 mph winds blew it all away. So in Kansas wind determines blizzard conditions, not amount of snowfall. 

The morning light cast a soft blue over everything. So pretty. 

Being that we live in Kansas obviously we don't have hills. I had forgotten that we had sleds packed away in the garage from our trip to Colorado a couple years ago. Needless to say the kids were psyched to play with sleds. 

Even if they had to pull each other around. 

Okay Father Winter...anytime you want to dump another 2 inches, or 22 inches, of snow on us I promise I won't complain! 

Bullet Holes and Mountain Slopes

To begin our trip to New Mexico we left on a Thursday right after the boys got home from school and drove about half the distance and found a hotel. Then on Friday morning we got up early and headed off. Around lunchtime we rolled into the little town of Cimarron, New Mexico. A little town with a big history. Cimarron is the home of the St. James Hotel a stopping place for some of the most legendary figures of the Wild West.

 Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Jesse James, Bat Masterson, Bill Cody, Governor (and author) Lew Wallace were just some of the famous customers of the hotel.

The hotel featured about three rooms furnished the way they would have been in the 1800's when these men would have stayed. I just love that bed. Fancy! 

 I like the idea of a fireplace in your hotel room. Why can't the Best Western do that?

 But the real story of the St. James Hotel is the bar where you can still see the bullet holes left by numerous gunfights in the tin ceiling. There were probably a dozen all together. My boys just thought that was amazing!  By the looks of the bullet holes I'm betting that pretty stained glass window probably isn't original!

The hotel is still a hotel and you can still rent a room for the night but be warned! The St. James is supposedly haunted by the men murdered there. A list of the gunfights were listed on the back of the hotel's restaurant's menu. Yep, the Wild West was really wild as the St. James history proves.

As much as we would have liked to stick around the St. James looking for ghosts, our goal was Taos so we hit the road again for a couple more hours and after checking into our hotel and asking some of the locals we found the perfect spot to go sledding in the Carson National Forest. Oh, I think these pics speak for themselves and explain just how much fun we had, no ski tickets, no crowds just lots of fast and bumpy fun.

 Yap

Yip

This is only half the hill we slid down!

Oh, and we adults didn't hold back either! My sister Officer.

Yahoo and I...of course she had enough when she realized she couldn't walk by herself in all that snow and I wouldn't let her go down on the sled by herself. She's a bit stubborn.

My brother in law Marvel Man..

...and DR. You know, I think there are times, like these, when this vacation was a lot more fun for the adults than for the kids! Who says you have to go to ski resort to have fun in the snow?