Dog Days of Winter

Typically when I think of February I think of cold, snow, and dreariness.  And cold. :) However, this winter has been far from typical.  In fact, the first day of February (which on a tangent, I cannot believe we're in February already, where is time going?!) here was unseasonably warm.  It was warm enough that I went for a trail run outside and actually got hot.  From what I hear, St. Louis has been crazy warm as well.  I was prepared for a winter full of snow when I moved out to Colorado but we really haven't gotten much snow at all, maybe one or two decent snow falls.  So, imagine our excitement when a huge snow storm was predicted for the end of this last week.  Meteorologists were warning of blizzard conditions, roads were shut down, Fort Carson issued a two hour delay which meant Matt had a snow day.  We settled in for the night on Thursday expecting to wake up to a world blanketed in white.  However, we awoke Friday morning to hardly a dusting of snow on the ground.  Talk about a disappointment.  The storm seemed to have gone North and East of us and Denver got pounded by snow as well as the corridor between Denver and the Northern part of the Springs.  We live so close to the mountains here in Old Colorado City that most weather patterns seem to miss us.  Matt's snow day seemed a bit silly when there was absolutely no snow on the ground by 10AM but it was nice to have a long weekend together.

The fact that Matt had Friday off meant that his last day of work was Thursday!!  While his terminal leave doesn't actually start until the 17th, the Army gives Soldiers ten days to clear so he has now started that process.  The next ten days he'll basically just be taking care of the administrative side of exiting the Army: making sure all the paperwork is correct, turning in equipment, that sort of thing.  This means that our house currently looks like the Army exploded in it.  Matt is having to go through ALL of his Army stuff and clean it and make sure he has everything issued to him to turn back in.  There are some things that he gets to keep and wants to save for our children and grandchildren.  It's crazy how much stuff he actually has, though perhaps not too surprising considering he's done two deployments.  So, our house will be a mess for a bit but it's incredibly exciting to enter into this next chapter of life.  Here's a couple pictures of the mess that I will happily put up with:

The guest room...the mess has since expanded
into the laundry room too.

Cooper was trying to help out.

It all has to be cleaned too: not an easy task
considering there's two years of Iraq gross-ness caked on it.

He can be so awkward when you try to take his picture.

Hope that everyone has a great Super Bowl Sunday!!  Matt will be enjoying the game with some Army buddies while I work.  Also, a very Happy Birthday to my awesome Dad...it's your 30th right? ;)