Who's Genes Are Those Anyway?

It snowed an unexpected boat load yesterday. I'm of the opinion, if it's going to snow... then it better damn well snow.  Ta da!  It did.  We got just under 7".  Wet heavy snow.  You look at it and it starts to melt.  So today,  my 7 yr old daughter and I set out to make a snowman.... or snow something.  She had been out for about 20 minutes longer than me.  Her snowthing was a just a base by the time I got to the yard, but it looked perfectly symetrical and as if it was covered with an oversized layer of fondant icing.  It was beautiful. She was on her knees, close to the ground, perfectly shaping the medium size sphere that would sit upon the base.  Who is this girl?  This neat tidy little thing that was picking the slightest bit of leaf and acorn debris from her work.  Why can't she do that to her room? 


I started in on my snowman project.  There's a KU basketball game later today, so I thought I'd make some snowcheerleaders in a 3 person pyramid.  I got the first two snowgirls set up side by side and was finishing the "flyer" snowgirl (that's cheer code for the girl that is on the top of the pyramid) when we caught my daughters eye.  She flashed a huge smile, ditched her project and asked to help me.   SURE!  I clipped some old Majestic Palms that had been in a pot and long since died, but kept their shape... perfect for hair or pom poms.  I wasn't sure yet.  We found acorns and juniper berries for eyes, sticks for arms and even some evergreens for eyelashes.  There was talk of food coloring in blue and red to make a K and a U, but we kind of forgot about that as we moved along.  

I had the flyer snowcheerleader mounted up on top of the other two bases.  They all had their hair, noses, eyes in... and then it happened. As I had my back turned I heard the thump.   Lil miss flyer fell backward to her death and creepily all that was really left, was the face... like a mask... with a plastered smile on it... 2 feet from the body.  I laughed really hard because it was a great attempt and I was actually good with leaving it like that and labeling it a cheerleading disaster.  My daughter however, was not. She bolted up off the ground and yelled "I can fix it!  We're going to fix it!  We have to fix it!"  After several attempts of packing snow in places it fell away from and putting the flyer back up... it just wasn't working. So... our cool pyramid looks more like a party pic from a sorority at KU.  Minus the alcohol punch filled red cups. 

My daughter returned to her snowthing... which turning out to be a bit steampunkish with it's quirky eyes, ponytail on top of the head, no mouth and smooth perfect shaped body.  Again... it's was like a cake covered in fondant.   I was amazed at our two different approaches to such a simple project and yet we're closely related.  Neither of us took the regular three snowballed body coal eyes path.  However, we didn't necessarily do it anything close to eachother's either!   I swear she's my child.  I know I delivered her and she looks like me at that age.  Perhaps none of my reckless, messy, let's give it a shot and see what happens genes made it into her.  She might have her daddy's DNA of simplistic, streamlined, minimalism and well thought out before attempting, thought processing.

As we finished and I took a few photos, we came inside to warm up... I saw she was still wearing her PJ's under her snowsuit.   Yep... THAT is my girl!  PJ's  might not have been the "right tool for the job" (my husband would have had all the right snow weather clothes on underneath his snowsuit) but they did get the job done and she stayed warm and cozy.  Awesome.  LOL!    

Group shot!  Parrrrr-teeeeee!