Snowmygosh! The photos!

I casually wrote to a few friends yesterday that I couldn't quite grasp that we were going to get an actual blizzard this week. The weatherman has been so wrong so many times this winter that I really thought we were going to get a smaller version of whatever was predicted.

Oh boy. Was I wrong or was I wrong?

I was wrong.

Starting yesterday afternoon we got slammed with snow. Blizzard-y snow, the kind where you really can't see much beyond a few feet. The snow started piling up around mid-afternoon and by the time Mike got home (early) from work he knew he better do an initial round of shoveling just to get ahead of the storm. Several people on our block did it also. One man even did a couple of rounds last night. I looked out into the darkness of our street, watching the snow swirl and blow, only to see him pushing his snowblower up and down the driveway. It seemed crazy to us then... but I guess he's lived through this before and knew more than we do about this stuff.

By this morning, we were buried in snow. We couldn't open our front or back doors. Luckily, we have a side door with a couple of steps down to the driveway. The snow had piled up on the drive, but not enough to cover both steps so Mike could leap down onto the driveway from that door. It was nuts!

Our front door. Not so bad looking actually, but you can see where snow was seeping in under the glass door.



Then... the backdoor. Wowsers.


Here's a pic with a child for scale:



This is my favorite one. Mike climbed up our stairs (somehow) and started shoveling a path to the door.



For three hours Mike shoveled and shoveled and shoveled. All the men in the neighborhood were out, sharing snowblowers, raking roofs (did you know you have to rake the snow off your roof with a special HUGE LONG rake?), and helping each other out. I told Mike it was like watching the suburban equivalent of a barn-raising.

Needless to say we stayed inside most of the morning. You couldn't even go out and play in the snow because it was simply too deep to walk in. Plus, the wind was pretty severe. Later in the afternoon we headed out just to see the novelty of it all.



The kids walked down the sidewalk paths. It was like a tunnel.

Some of the neighborhood kids were out playing and we walked down to say hello. These kids were so creative. They created snow tunnels in the lawn and then crawled through them. Anna crawled on her belly through this one. It was really impressive!




We didn't stay out too long though. Long enough to get cold fingers and feet. Then we headed home - back down the tunnel path to our house.

Here's the "after" shot of the backstairs Mike dug out this morning. Amazing, huh?

Preschool has already been cancelled again for tomorrow. Our area is relatively plowed, but a lot of neighborhoods are still buried. Thankfully, there weren't power outages around here. We lost internet/cable/phone for awhile, but no big deal. It's peaceful when we can't log on, isn't it?

Having Mike home today was fun. A special little mid-week surprise. Granted, he wore himself out shoveling, but I think we all loved the extra family day. Tomorrow he'll head back to work. But now we're just two days away from the weekend when the fun can begin again, right?

Gotta love a snow day!