Winter Wonderland and Sean Takes 3rd Place At County Spelling Bee
February 15, 2008
What a weird weather pattern we have been getting lately. Earlier this week, the temp was in the low 70′s – quite nice. Today, we are in the middle of a Winter Storm Warning.
Earlier this morning, we received about 2 inches of snow. That snow, plus the threat of a whole bunch more, caused school to get cancelled this morning. Suzanne was over with Sean at the spelling bee, so I had to pick up Savannah. She was happy to see the snow since we hadn’t yet had any accumulation this year.
The weather service was calling for a lot more snow tonight. We live at 5000 feet elevation. The estimate was for 3 – 6 inches between 4000 and 500 feet and for 6 – 12 inches between 5000 and 7000 feet. I doubt we will see anywheres near a foot of snow, but a couple more inches of snow is certainly possible. Its been pretty warm today for snow. In fact, most of the two inches from this morning has already disappeared. But with darkness now here, the temperatures are dropping and the snow is beginning to fall again. It will be interesting to see if we get any more snow.
As I mentioned earlier, today was the Santa Cruz County Spelling Bee. Sean won an entry into that by winning the Elgin School Bee. Two years ago, he won the County Bee and advanced to the State Bee. Last year, Sean finished third in the County. Well, again this year, he finished third. He was knocked out when asked to spell the word “lariat”. That surprised me because its not that difficult a word and living in cowboy country, I would have figured he knew that word.
From the sound of the rest of the competition, it was probably just a matter of time before he got knocked out though. The remaining two contestants went an additional 7 rounds before a winner was determined. Sean said he knew about 8 or 10 of those 14 words. So another good job by Sean, but he was hoping for a return to the State Bee. He has two more years of eligibility for the Bee, so maybe next year.
Family Update 2/6/08
February 6, 2008
As usual, the family seems to be extremely busy once again.
To a certain extent, its driven by the upcoming Showstoppers Dance Competition coming up in a few weeks in Phoenix. The kids have been having extra rehearsals and extra practices at home. I can’t remember how many dances they will be doing this year, but its a boat load. Suzanne will also be kicking in a song and dance number this year to New York, New York. Mr Papa will, as usual, be in the audience. Luckily, this year, I will have my laptop with me. I can only hope for a wi-fi connection at the competition place. We will spend the weekend in Phoenix for the competition.
Construction finally began today on our driveway. We have a dirt road that leads from the county maintained road up to the house. After every monsoon season, we get a pretty deep ditch that we have to drive over from the water rushing along the road. We usually just pay someone to come out and grate it back to level. This year, we decided to try to do something a little more permanent. We are having a small concrete section put in from the road for several feet up our dirt drive. It will be sloped enough that water from the monsoon rains should just harmlessly flow down it. At least thats the hope and plan. One of our neighbors/friends is in the construction business, so we are getting a good deal on it.
The kids were a bit bummed that the snow storm missed us this past weekend. We usually get a couple of storms a year where we get some accumulation. This year, we have yet to get one. The mountains are plenty covered and actually lower elevations closer to Tucson actually got some accumulation. The storm either died out or blew East of us and pretty much didn’t give us any moisture. Not much time left in the Winter for snow this year. Oh, the kids weren’t too upset since they still had a delayed start of school on the day following the night the storm was supposed to hit.
The Qwest DSL continues to chug along nicely after one week. I figure I will give it a month and then cancel my wireless provider. I don’t look forward to that, but it will have to be done. Since we live so far out in the country, Qwest only offers 2 speeds to the area. A bare minimum speed and their silver plan at 1.5M. Their platinum plan is 7M but they say I am too far from the central office. My line tests good for 6M, but they don’t have such a plan, so I am stuck with 1.5M. Stuck isn’t fair, since its better than I have ever had before. I am just bandwidth greedy.
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