Papá y Su Hija

Chen's been working a lot lately, but when he's not, he tries to get in as much quality time with Juliette as possible.

Reading in Spanish...

Playing "doctor"....

And teaching her the fine arts of his favorite sport, basketball!

The Big Snow Day!

Yesterday we got our first snow day in several years. Again, I apologize in advance for some of the photo quality... but you'll get the idea of what we woke up to:

As Chen got ready to go out and tackle the shoveling, Juliette just had to be a part of it. So we bundled her up as well:

When Juliette saw Chen in his ski overalls, she told him he looked just like Papa Bear from the Berenstain Bears. Little did she know, she was going to be playing the role of Mini-Me with her matching overalls....
Okay, maybe she did know -- check out that face!

(The truth is, our girl just hates having her picture taken. What are doting parents to do??)

Here they go... all bundled up and ready to rock the white stuff!

Juliette and Duncan face the wall of snow

So we're supposed to be able to "play" in this stuff??

Our fearless duo soon realized that they needed to position themselves directly behind Papa in order to make any progress beyond the back door...

Of course, being held by him works too...

Back to work....

And they venture atop the mound...

That didn't last long...

I don't really think Papa was trying to put her on Duncan -- his legs are even shorter than Juliette's!

The path gets longer...

(You can tell how very helpful I was through all this... most of these last few photos were actually taken from inside the house.)

After a minor falling episode though, my presence was required... so out I ventured, led on by the two shorties.

This was the view I looked back on:

At the end of the path, we found Papa, facing his next challenge:

Juliette was overwhelmed by the prospect of digging the car out of that pile:

Overwhelmed and defeated... She couldn't even see the car from where she stood! So she decided to do what she does best: cop a squat, of course!

Papa, on the other hand, went inside the garage to see what we faced from that angle...

It wasn't any better.

As she got herself comfortable in a wall of snow, our girl's spirits started to improve.

And the sun even came out!

Who knew snow could be so comfy?

And Papa's work continues...

Here we can see how very helpful Juliette was as her father slaved away...

I mean, really!

That's our girl!

And this is her snowy puppy...

Stay warm!!