Saturday night the grandkids’ school had a talent show. Lots of silly skits and songs. Below you can see our grandniece on the cello, and granddaughter on half of the piano. Before the skit was over, several of them vied for space on the piano, and then our grandson came out dressed like a thief, and stole the music stand. The cellist followed him offstage, and then the pianists left too. I’m not sure what the meaning of it all, but it was funny.

There were other songs and skits, but the only photogenic one was these kids performing in the dark while wearing glow-sticks.

Here’s the whole silly crew:

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On a very different note, the next day I was at a building supply store, and saw this little Zamboni-like floor cleaner chugging along… driven by a stuffed moose. What is maybe even worse, the moose seemed to be asleep at the wheel! The autonomous cleaner drove up and down the aisles, and would stop if person (me) got too close. Maybe these are old news, but this is the first I’ve been able to watch. Fun! Half a store away, I saw what looked like a retired man (older than me) driving a similar machine. I felt like telling him his job was being threatened by Teddy Bears!

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From our back windows we can see a new house going up. It still amazes me how fast this process moves! A big cat dug the hole in a day, the next day a concrete pumper poured some footings, and a day or two later forms were put in place for basement walls. They were filled with concrete, and pretty soon forms are off, and it’s time to pour the concrete floors. That’s what the pumper is doing here.

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Tuesday we had a little outing planned with a friend. We went to Scheels, a very large sporting goods store. I know they are a big chain store, and I don’t know if they are all outfitted similarly. But this store has several bronze statues out front – figures biking, snowboarding, playing tennis and more. In addition, there are two of presidents: Lincoln and Reagan. And inside the store is a lego man sporting Nebraska’s Big Red garb.

When you walk in the store, there is a huge fish tank that I didn’t take any pictures of… but it is shaped like a series of arches where you can see tropical fish in the huge vertical supports and swimming over your head. Maybe 50 feet wide? It’s big.

An area inside is full of taxidermy animals, and LOTS of them! From weasels and ground squirrels to elk and grizzly bears, with everything imaginable in between. Deer, antelope, bobcats, mountain goats, foxes chasing pheasants, badgers, skunks and far more. We even saw one mammal that I’d never heard of before… and I can’t remember its name. Sigh. I looked it up at the time and it is a real animal.

The center of the store is dominated by a huge ferris wheel, possibly about 40 feet tall. We got to ride the wheel, and see everything from a birds’ eye view.

We went from the carnival atmosphere of the sporting goods store to a nice little restaurant. After lunch, we’d planned on a bit more exploring, but the storm that was forecast seemed to be moving in a bit earlier than expected. So we all headed home to watch the storm brew. Forecasts predicted 65 mph winds, with snow!

With the temperature dropping fast, and the wind stirring everything up, all was covered in ice pretty quickly. I figured we wouldn’t get much in the way of snow accumulation, but rather just some interesting drifts. Most of the snow would be blown into Iowa!

I like this picture of the view from my office window. Ice! Below that is a 17 second video of snow blowing across our front yard. Nope, nothing happens… just snow blowing. Maybe we get a bit crazy when weathered in!

In the morning we still had heavy winds, and large areas of our yard were pretty bare… but a few drifts were three or four feet thick! Of course, our driveway wouldn’t be one of the areas where the snow was blown off.

Some of the textures on the snow drifts were very pretty!

It looked like the driveway and sidewalks only had about 3 inches of snow, but that was not correct. It was that thick of ICE! Very tenacious ice. Cherryl is seen below chipping a walkway to the street. (somebody had to stay inside to get the picture.) It was two days before we got the entire driveway cleared.