We’re back! Here’s my cold, snow-and-wind-chafed face the day after Christmas, back at the park for more dog ball.

Bear Cub getting really into that snow.

What a weird little Schnub! She needs a hair cut. We all do, really. Except Maggie.

This was the day that we drove up to Rose Hill so that I could have a better view to take pictures of the foothills, which are surprisingly pretty with snow covering them.

There are always many things I want to do when I visit my parents’ house–on this trip I wanted to stop by my old high school to see if my memory matched up with the reality–but I didn’t.

Usually I get the urge to shop at my favorite little hippie shop, but since we just visited Boise in September for my brother’s wedding I didn’t have any shopping urges at all. That was niiiiice.

Boise never looks this pretty to me when I visit in the summertime, that’s for sure! It’s normally so…yellow.

Let it snow!

We also played dog ball in the backyard, and built a couple of snow buddies.

I neglected to snap a photo of my snow buddy, but here is Josh’s.

Eyebrows and all! Apparently my snow buddy-building skills have been wrong, all these years–Josh made the body of the snow buddy by forming a snow ball, then rolling it around to build it up. He had his snow buddy built in a short amount of time. My technique was always to just sort of mound up the snow and sculpt it into a body, which takes a much longer time. Learn something new each day!

On Sunday Josh watched the Seahawks game on the television downstairs, while my father watched the Denver Broncos game upstairs.

Meanwhile, I began the daunting task of organizing several decades’ worth of photos into plastic gallon bags, by decade. This is the sort of organizing task that I’ve wanted to do for years, and I’m glad I finally got started. Also: I removed the last of my clothes from my closet AND the last of my 1990’s Vogues from the office! Success! At long last, success!

Bonus: now I have an easel like a REAL painter. I already put it to use this week.

Beautiful clouds on the drive home. We bought a boxed set of David Sedaris audiobooks to listen to (read by David AND Amy!) and cackled for hours. When we weren’t listening to Madonna, that is.

Coming up next: Christmas back at the New House with Joshy’s family! Stay tuned!