We had a tiny bit of snow last week.
Other parts of the city and nearby cities are getting much more than us. Apparently we live in some sort of weather free zone or something.
This was the first we got all winter and it lasted until about noon.
Which is just fine by me.
learning to spell,
reading new books,
chasing wind up toys
shaking...
...and then silly stringing the snow.
isaiah drew a reindeer on his new paper pad with new pencils.
and ellen got aquainted with all the inner workings
We had no new snow accumulation today! Yay! Things were even melting for a while. I've never enjoyed the sound of water trickling to the ground more. It warmed up enough that we even got the van started. Dave shoveled the driveway (again) and took it around the block real quick to make sure the roads were safe enough to drive with the kids. He ended up driving all the way to the store and back and by the time he got back it started to snow again. We got all the kids piled up and into the car and then got stuck in the road outside our house.
Suck.
At that very moment a rock truck pulled onto our street. The first one we've seen. I kid you not. Dave tried a few more times and I got all the kids out of the car and back into the house. The guys working the rock truck gave Dave a few extra shovels full of rock and he got back into the driveway.
I was not a happy camper let me tell you.
I decided to take a good look in the garage cause I thought we did have chains. Lo and behold we did. Dave put those suckers on and we were outta here. Lots of super exciting grocery shopping. We went two places and we are now fully equipped to last through another week of being snowed in. It is supposed to snow more in the next few days, but it looks like things will start to thaw around Friday so it shouldn't be too much longer.
I didn't take any new pictures today, but here's some more from yesterday.
Ellen showing Zai around her fort/castle.
All that white can really bug your eyes.
We've been a bit concerned about the roof, but not enough to actually get up on the roof (now that sounds dangerous). So Dave knocked off anything within reach of the broom handle.
He also made a snow angel,
and threw snow balls at us spoiled warm people in the house.
shoveling snow.
When I started there was nothing falling from the sky. But in the 30 minutes or so it took me it started snowing again and there was an inch or so in the place where I first started.
I braved the freezing cold to bring you pictures of Dave and Ellen's ice sculptures.
getting started
an ice castle.
these are about four feet high
I left the boys inside, so I poked my head back in to make sure everything was fine. Yep. still eating raisins.
So far this past week we've had several rather small snow storms. It snows for several hours and then clears up. Some days it even melts completely away. That was one of the things that made the 'snow days' so frustrating. I could have gone somewhere in the afternoon, but we had no way to know that in the morning. Anyway. Yesterday it started snowing in earnest. It snowed ALL day. Here's the back railing mid morning with what I thought was a lot of snow.
And the chair. Keep an eye on the amount of snow on the chair.
Here's last night...
Still more snow coming down...
I like the little hat on this bush.
and this morning.
In the night things turned icey.
I think it compacted a bit with the ice forming on the top cause last night it was closer to 7 inches.
Dave could peel that top layer up in sheets.
Snow days when Dave is home are so much more fun. He takes the kids outside to play in it - which is not something I can easily do with Brennan. Yesterday I even got to jet outside with Ellen and we had our own snowball fight.
not the best video I've ever taken, but you can hear the ice dave tosses skidding along the icey "lawn".
the snow's gone now. I'm hopeful for tonight and tomorrow. And I feel a little like a whiny whiner in that last post.
I've finally given up on school a little and let the kids have a snow day. All the other kids in the neighborhood are out and we're all so stir crazy that school's not really productive right now anyway. I've been inundating Isaiah with Leap Frog movies about reading to get him ready to start reading our Bob books next week when Dave's home. Isaiah's totally ready to start reading - in fact he's started a few months ago, but once Dave gets him going next week we're going to keep it up every day just like Ellen. For some reason Dave is the official learning-to-read starter. I think he has more patience with it.
So. We're having a snow day. Our snow days tend to look like this:
Ellen goes outside to play in the snow with friends.
Isaiah finds something to do inside where its warm.
And Brennan gets himself prepped for the day.
And then Ellen comes in and tries to get warmed up.
(By the way, Brennan has just recently fallen in love with that train set himself. but every time I get the camera out he wanders away from it.)
