Elise in Real Life: February 2013

One time... It snowed a lot in Provo. And I feel like the older I get, the less people there are who are willing to play in the snow with me. I grew up in Texas, so on the rare occasion that there was snow, it was a BIG deal, and everyone and their mom was outside playing in it. So I feel like I still have that mindset, and this week I was determined to play in the snow. Luckily, Matt (probably reluctantly) agreed to go gallivant with me so our adventure began!!

First we went to rock canyon to sled. I had bought a cheap plastic round sled a couple months earlier for our last snow day when me and Ariel built a snow slide on our front porch, so that is what we took. I have NEVER been sledding at rock canyon, but one time Krista went and she came home looking like this:

So.... I was just hoping we wouldn't die. When we got there, I was reminded of how childish this activity was because of the fact that me and Matt were the only adult-aged people there who didn't bring small children with us. Apparently sledding is a kid thing. I made Matt go first, and he did fine, and then I took about 6 1/2 minutes to mentally prepare myself and then accidentally lost my footing and just started careening down this freaking steep hill of death! I lived though, and it was fun. We went a couple more times, then had a competition to see who could roll a ball of snow down the hill the farthest (I won), and then we went down together which was scarier than heck because we are both too big to be on that sled together, but luckily an obnoxious asian pre-teen encouraged us via taunting and we did it! But seriously, that guy was obnoxious.

And THEN THE REAL FUN BEGAN! I don't know why I'm making a whole blog about this, but it was cool enough and we have good pictures so just bear with me. THIS IS WHAT WE DID!!! We went back to my house and filled up ketchup/salad dressing bottles with water and food coloring and determined to go and vandalize people's front yards (aka, write in the snow). It took us awhile to figure out what exactly to do with it, but eventually we made our way to the park on 4th north and started making a "treasure map" aka, a bunch of dotted lines going around the park with little "activities" or messages along the way. This is how it went:

(This is hard to read, but its next to a BBQ and it says BBQ raccoons for dinner)

(This one went underneath the monkey bars. And then my bandaid dropped into the snow so I buried it and put an X over it, hoping someone would think that was the "treasure" and dig it up... excuse my immaturity)

(Part of the treasure hunt included going up the stairs and down the slide)

(Just in case you weren't 100% sure what yellow snow was... and unfortunately we couldn't find the yellow food coloring that day... :( )

(lava)

So while we were doing this, there was a family with 2 children at the park, and they were building a snowman when they got there but strangely left once we started drawing. The two kids were swinging on the swings during most of our treasure-hunt creation, and the little girl was FREAKING OUT that we were doing it. "MOM, IT SMELLS LIKE THEY ARE MAKING A FIRE!" (Because yes, child, if there were two hooligan college students being arsonists, they would be spreading gasoline in the SNOW where it could easily be lit) "MOM THEY ARE BEING SO RUDE" "MOM THEY ARE PUTTING UGLY COLORS IN THE SNOW". And my favorite moment was when she came up to me and stated, "You are SCARY." Which made me want to cry, because no one has ever said that to me before and meant it. I asked her if she wanted to squirt some colored water in the snow, to try and lighten the mood but she shook her head and said "No WAY" and ran off. So at the very end of the scavenger hunt, as a tribute to her, we made some fire.... that kind of looked like a flower.