We have gotten a delightful amount of snow this year. Last Saturday the newspaper said that so far this year we had snow on 29 days, compared to 26 days last year. The total snowfall measured at the airport was a bit over 16 inches so far this year compared to a total of 22 inches last year. All of that was before this weekend when the weather systems coming in from the Oregon coast added another ten to twelve inches of snow. For the first time this school year, school was called off on Monday. On Sunday at Church our neighbor behind us (the house on the other side of our fence in the picture) told me that somehow her kids had tossed their sled into our yard and that sometime next spring we might see it emerge from the snow. Well, there’s definitely enough snow out there to bury a sled — more than three feet on average! The snow goes up close to the fence but not up to the fence because of the prevailing southerly wind that circles down along the fence blowing the snow back. I think it’s pretty cool.

Today is an election day across a number of states in the U.S. The press is calling it Super Tuesday. Sunday was the Big Football Game, the Super Bowl, so that day is called Super Sunday. In between we also had a Super Monday as the new First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was announced. As expected, the new president is President Thomas S. Monson. His counselors are Elder Henry B. Eyring and Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf. For the first time in LDS history, a member of the First Presidency comes from outside the United States. It was indeed a Super Monday!

We’ll go vote in just a few minutes. Our voting will be about whether or not the city should use bond money for the renovation of the Holt Auditorium. It’ll raise our property taxes slightly, but well worth it. I’m certain, however, that the project will go down in defeat. The citizens of the City of Pocatello do not know what it means to have a viable and vibrant city infrastructure. The auditorium was originally built by Idaho State University, but the upkeep was the responsibility of the local citizens. The bill has come due and the prevelant letters to the editor say, “The State built it, let the State pay for it!” as though the State of Idaho has some source of magical money. Nevertheless, we’ll go vote YES. The democrats are having a caucus today to allocate the State of Idaho delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The republican primary will be held in May when we’ll go vote once again.