Snow in Colorado

Well, it's snowing here in Colorado Springs. It began yesterday evening, and has continued unabated since; it is projected to end tomorrow and be sunny and warm by Wednesday. I ventured out into the cold to take some pictures of the snowy Colorado landscape. These pictures truly do not do justice to the pristine beauty of the Springs cloaked in fluffy white. I saw some scenes later today when I was without camera that would have made a grown man cry. Okay, maybe they wouldn't have, but they sure were wonderful sights to see. Here are some of the not-so wonderful pictures anyway for your viewing pleasure.

Waves in the snow, caused by the strong wind (strong enough that I had to brace myself to take these pictures).

Snow being blown from the tops of drifts.

An interesting pattern in the slush at the edge of my driveway.

The wind was strong enough to bend tree branches such as these.

A FedEx truck traversing the slushy wilderness.

This is the same boulevard pictured in my blog here. What a change.

Upward-growing ice crystals on a bush!

And finally, for contrast, some flowers I photographed only nine days earlier.

A New Thing

I might answer emails with blog entries more frequently now, such as I did in the last post. It seems like an easy way to keep everyone up to date, while still replying to the email as desired by its sender. I will still blog while on my mission, through email.

Chris

An Email to Karen

Karen dearest,

Ryan Burton visited ASMSA? Sweet! I thought he was still in Utahville moving giant farm sprinklers! Well, good news. I have my final Bishop interview on Thursday, my Stake President interview on Sunday, and I'll have my papers off by Monday the 17th! Then I should find out around the 27th where and when I am going for my mission! I just got back from a farewell for a guy from my ward here in Colorado Springs. His name is Kyle Jones, and he is leaving Tuesday for the Missionary Training Center, after which he will report to Tacoma, Washington! I was the official photographer at the farewell, and took around 100 pictures of him with families from our ward and also of people just mingling. That was fun. My brother, Chandler, is returning Friday from his mission in Vienna, Austria. We are going to go camping and do tons of other fun stuff, and I cannot wait to see him again and hang out with him! He's really going to show me up with his German, though. When he left, my German was far better, but I have not practiced in two years and he has done nothing but. Well, holla back; this communication thing you speak of sounds pretty good.

Cheers,
Chris

On 10/7/05, Karen Smith wrote:

So... I'm sitting in the library with one of my three favorite mormons boys (Ryan Burton, as apposed to the other two, Robert Shepherd and this one guy name Chris Haueter) and I thought, hum... I should send Chris a line to say, "hey!" So... this is a line... or well three, to say, "hey!" and I miss you and all that jazz. Just thinking of you. Hope you have a fantastic day/week until next time. (by the way, you should write back and then we could have this weird little thing called communication. It's pretty flippin sweet from what I hear!)

Alright. Love you, Happy Christmas~

Karen

Pictures of 1991

My father in Somalia while on a mission for the Air Force delivering aid to the starving Somalis:

My siblings and me viewing the video from which the above picture was extracted:

Ah, the early nineties; those were the days.

Chris