Oh my snow!

So, I might have complained a little bit in my January blog about the lack of snow in January compared to December. I should be fair and note that the huge snowfall we got before Christmas set records in Philly, and that we don't ever normally get much snow. Well...I complained, and then it decided to snow. And snow. And snow! We got about 20 inches on one Saturday and then we got another 24 inches a few days later on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was actually pretty crazy! We like to think that we're pretty hard-core when it comes to snow from our Utah days, but I don't think we've ever seen that much snow that close together! And we usually joke that people out here in Philly let snow rule their lives because it only takes a few inches to cancel school, but this Eastern snow is so different than the Utah snow! First of all, it is HEAVY and very wet (which makes it way heavier, and much harder to shovel). Then, even when there's just a couple of inches on the street, driving is basically like ice skating in a car! So the fact that school was cancelled for a couple of days was probably a good thing.

During the storms, we got to stay home and have a bunch of fun snow days with my mom visiting! We had a lot of fun with Nana Betty being here enjoying the snow with us. We made lots of yummy food like Nana Farol's homemade potato soup and lots of Cafe Rio salads (my wonderful mother once again brought us salad dressing in a thermos in her luggage...yum!). And we were very lucky to get to just stay home with our power on, which did not happen for everyone! We knew quite a few people who lost power for up to 3-4 days, so we were very very glad to have heat and lights! Apparently having all these huge eastern trees everywhere make it much more dangerous for power lines and generators when they fall over! Anyway, here are some of our pictures from the two blizzards.

This pic was taken looking out of our back door onto our patio after the second blizzard. That's the bench that's covered off to the left side of the doorway.

This is the kids little plastic slide/cube gym thing. We could barely even recognize it!

Here is a picture of the driveway that Milt shoveled (and if you notice, the snow doesn't even go down much from the piles he put on top...it was just that deep everywhere!)

And if you contrast these two pics of Milt, the one on the left was taken while shoveling from the first blizzard, and the one on the left was DURING the second (he had to shovel multiple times during the snow to keep on top of it all!) He is all smiling at first, but was not happy by the second storm, and was REALLY seeing the benefit of owning a snow blower (like a few of our lucky neighbors)!

This is the 'mountain' Milt made from the snow on the driveway. You can see on the left that it was a cute little mountain after the first storm (and the girls LOVED playing on it), but by the second storm, Kennedy couldn't quite get to the top anymore because it was too big (it was at least 5 feet tall)!

And here is the comparison between our mailbox after the first storm and then after the second. Milt even actually had to help push the postman's car out of the snow because his car got stuck across the street delivering mail DURING a storm! I couldn't believe he was even out there trying! These mail workers are very diligent!

This pic shows the kids playing on their new climbing gym after the first storm here, and you can kind of see how much snow we got after the first storm, when the kids LOVED playing on it with the snow under it! It is actually makes quite a fun snow toy!

And here after the second storm, you can only see about half of the play gym! The kids couldn't manage to get out there to play in it quite as well now (probably since the snow would have gone up to Kennedy's shoulders by then!)

And cute little Maddox really only liked walking on the "shoveled" portion of the driveway...and he loves eating snow! But he couldn't just eat snow on the top, he had to stick his arm in the MIDDLE of the snow piles and then bringing his find out to eat. He was so funny about it! And he didn't even get to go out after the second storm hit because there was just too much snow for him and he got a stomach bug that kept him inside for a week (which was probably best!)

And here is McKinley after the first storm holding on to the sign by the street, her favorite place.

Here is a pic of pretty Kennedy, refusing to even look at the camera while we were out playing one day. She LOVES playing in the snow, and has never once wanted to come inside (we always have to make her come in). She can stay out in the cold for hours!

These next two pictures show Kennedy out foraging around after the first blizzard (because, of course, it was too deep for her to do it after the second). She would just hike out where no one had been, and plop down to do snow angels.

Here is her snow angels (this was as close as I could get because I didn't want to walk through all that snow...which of course I had to do a few minutes later anyway when she got stuck!)

And this is my favorite picture because it shows my Mom and Maddox inside staying warm and watching (and laughing) at me climbing through the snow to rescue Kennedy when she got stuck doing her snow angel. Yeah. I was pretty much crazy and wearing clogs without socks while climbing through the snow because I'm a good mom...although I must admit that it took me a few hesitating seconds of her freaking out and crying before I ventured in (half of the time my clogs would get buried in the snow, so my next step was barefoot until I could unbury my shoe). I was only out in the first place to take a few quick pictures (on the shoveled sidewalk and driveway) before hurring back in to the warmth, so I wasn't completely crazy being out there like that. But Kennedy learned her lesson because she certainly didn't forage in the snow after the second storm. She was too afraid of getting stuck in even MORE snow!