SNOW!!!!! and the best Christmas gift ever!

Well, it finally happened. SNOW! And I mean REAL snow, about 8 inches of that beautiful white fluffy stuff! I realize that 8 inches is nothing for those of you living in the more wintery northern parts but here in the "slush belt" metro east area of St. Louis, MO (but in the cornfields of IL!) we don't get the good stuff all that often. AND, I am delighted to report that the snowblower Santas gave my husband and I for Christmas this year is finally out of the box and working very well indeed! Since our youngest snow shoveler, er...I mean son went off to college this year, I knew that drastic action was required to prevent ME having to be out there with a manual shovel. I am too old for that nonsense! And since it's mechanical, my husband is enjoying the new "toy" very much, especially as he went out for the third time in 24 hours to clear the driveway and sidewalks!

Actually the snowblower was working pretty well just sitting in the box and warding off snow until this week when the prevention mode failed and the snow began falling on Sunday, however it's doing a fine job out of the box clearing the snow. I'm pretty sure that Mike (my husband) thought "Santa" was being pretty silly surprising us with a snowblower but he said he liked it more and more with every pass he made down the driveway and now he's sold! In fact, he put it in the car and drove over to our friends' home to help them clear their driveway and sidewalks. Apparently my buddy Lisa took the snow shovels out of the garage and put them in the shed in the backyard over the summer (seems like some people actually notice clutter rather than walking past it oblivious like I do!) and when her husband went to the get the shovels out of the shed, the snow was so high that he couldn't open the doors to the shed. So, the boys are out playing in the snow and I am betting our friends (also first time empty nesters this year) will be asking Santa for a snowblower next Christmas! I'm just glad they still had them in stock at Home Depot when I went shopping the week before Christmas!

But enough of that nonsense...I promised a picture of Spiderman. Are your "spidey senses" tingling yet? ok, ok...I guess you have to watch cartoons to understand that one but if you are a Marvel Heros fan, you will get it. And here are some photos of me with that famous web crawler, Spiderman taken during the Stampin' UP! Managers' Reception at Universal Studios earlier this month. In one of them, he was trying to teach me how to be a "web slinger" just in case you wonder what is wrong with me in the photo. ;-)