Snow

Minnesota was hit pretty hard by snow in November. The first day, I worked from home to keep out of the way of all those drivers who forgot how to drive in snow. We had maybe 8 inches or so fall that day, and more since. Scarlett loves it, and has been asking to go out and play a lot. Here are some fun pictures from our snow adventures in MN so far.

Cars

Pretty good crunch

See ya later Mustang!

Anyone who follows my Facebook posts knows that I had a bit of a car situation a few weeks ago. Early one morning (about 4:30 a.m.) on the way to the airport, I was going around a tight curve on I-35W and my rear wheels slid out from under me. (It was raining, and I had new tires, so I can only assume I hydroplaned.) I corrected, then corrected again, spun around and ended up slamming the driver's side of my rear bumper into the concrete barrier. A little shaken up, I turned around and kept going to the airport and went on my merry way, reporting it to insurance at the airport.

New Subaru, aka the pickle car

Geico decided to total the car, and gave me a check. Unfortunately, that left us with only a 1995 Ford Mustang. Let me tell you, it's difficult getting two kids with car seats into the back of a sports car. And when my rear wheels slid out from under me when pulling out of a parking lot when I wasn't even going very quickly, I decided I needed to replace that car as well. 

Barbi

I looked online every night for a couple weeks, and found out that there are a lot of cars with salvage titles due to hail damage. The salvage title and the physical damage make them quite a bit less expensive. We looked into a few of these cars, and over the course of 24 hours, we purchased two new-to-us cars: one is a 2005 Malibu Maxx (128k miles), and the other is a 2007 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport (55k miles). Because of the damage and the green color of the Subaru, Scarlett calls it the pickle car. And the Maxx has been dubbed "Barbie" (Malibu Barbie - yup, I live with all females).

Both cars are better in the snow, and I also managed to sell the Mustang. Thank goodness for two well-working cars!

Wedding Trip to Utah

So these seem to be a little more like a place to post some pictures than actual blogs. I'll do better in the future. But in October, we were able to go to Utah for Kristen's brother Sean's wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony and a great opportunity to spend time with family (we also had a ton of fun dancing at the reception).

Halloween

I apologize for not being on top of the whole blog posting thing. Busy life as of late. But anyway, Halloween. Scarlett decided the day of that she no longer wanted to be Tinkerbell, though that's what she's wanted to be every time she was asked for the last six months. Kristen managed to coax her into her costume just "to try it on," and she was fine after that.

Felicity was supposed to be Periwinkle (Tinkerbell's sister), and Kristen found a Cinderella outfit that we were just going to add wings to. That didn't happen, so she was Cinderella. :)

Our ward had a party with a Trunk or Treat, which was a lot of fun. On actual Halloween, it was really cold, so Scarlett bundled up and mom took her out trick or treating until she got too cold. I can count on one hand the number of trick-or-treaters we got at our house. I guess our area of the neighborhood isn't fancy enough.

Kristen and I did not dress up, nor did we carve pumpkins this year (which is tantamount to heresy in the Southerland household). But Kristen managed to dress up 4 times this year (Comic Con), plus made herself a skirt for Sean's wedding just the week before Halloween, so I think we get a pass. We'll do some more next year.