More snow means more snow pictures

As a surprise to no one, school was canceled today.  Last night the schools called it.  The nice thing about that was that we didn't get the call at 5:30 in the morning.

We had a leisurely day.  We stayed in our pajamas most of the morning, while it continued to snow.  By 9am, outside our house looked like this:

The weather man suggested we wait until around 2pm when the snow would stop to go outside and clean up.  That sounded good to us.  So, we waited.

Arlington has a project to work on for school where she needs to fine 100 words in Magazines and make a picture out of them  (100 words she knows).  It isn't due for a few weeks, but today we decided to start on it.  My job was to make sure didn't have any repeats, but she did the rest.  Today she found 60 words she wanted to use.

Then she told me she wanted to make them into the Statue of Liberty.

Ummmm.........sure.  Let me whip out my super stellar skills to make that happen.

My girl loves art.  She can make art out of anything.  But the Statue of Liberty?  That is hard.  And she wants to put the "water and sky and everything" on the paper too.  All out of words.  There aren't enough snow days for that project.

We were able to go outside this afternoon and survey the damage.  All in all, we got about 21 inches of new snow.  We already had around 8 inches from the last storm, so we have quite a bit of snow out there now.

The kids had a great time.  When we first went out, I think it surprised them how deep it was.

 Yes - the kids are standing in the snow - not sitting in these pictures.

 Our back patio was really covered.

 It took us quite awhile to get from the back patio to the front of the house.

 Mat's car was buried pretty deep  in the snow.

 The snow was really hard, so if you laid down, you didn't sink.

 Once we reach the driveway, where our super awesome neighbor had plowed, we could move a little easier.

 Finley slid down the snow drift from the top of our rock wall, to the driveway.

 Arlington had a good time just lying in the snow and making snowballs.  She also ate quite a bit of it.

 I started to clean off my van and realized that I was too short for this job.  I was knee deep in snow and could only reach so far.  But I took a picture of the car as I cleaned it off.

 As we dug out, we threw the snow into our yard, and it started to make a huge mound.  Finley and Cainan enjoyed that, and made it into their castle.

 Cainan was having a good time outside.  He never complained that he was cold, or he couldn't move that well.  He enjoyed chopping into the snow with his hands and carrying large balls of snow over to their castle.

 Arlington's true love of winter is sled riding.  Today the snow was not that great for sledding.  She tried a few times down out side hill out front.  The snow was too deep to go the "the hill" today.

She didn't get far.

 

  Once we knocked the snow off Mat's car, it got buried a little bit more.  Oops.  My bad.

 Finley climbed the snow bank like it was Mt. Everest.  She was so proud of herself.

Finley did bail the earliest and today I let her go inside the house.  We were in the driveway, and she wanted to go and play in her room.  About 10 minutes go by and she comes to the window with a bowl full of pretzels.  While this does not sound alarming - Finley cannot REACH the pretzels without help.  Or a stool.....  So not the best choice to let her go inside.

This reminded me of when my brother and I were little.  My mom had stepped outside our house to meet me from school.  AJ (my brother) was a bit younger than Finley was at the time of this story, but I can see where she gets her antics from.  So, my mom steps outside, and my brother closes our front door and locks it.  It is one of those old fashion turned locks.  Smart boy that he was - he could lock it, but had no idea how to unlock it.  My dad ended up having to come home from work to let my mom and I into the house.  And it was snowing.  And cold.  My mom didn't know what my brother might be doing inside, but he eventually came to the window with some Oreo cookies.  Not so dumb after all..........

Arlington realized that the plowed driveway was slick enough that she could sled down it.  She she loved the speed she was able to get.

 Thank goodness there was a wall on the other side of our driveway to stop her from going into the trees.

 Cainan spent some time making a little hole in the snow.

 At one point he did get stuck, and Finley helped him out.

Mat built a tunnel in the giant snow mound in between our cars.  Finley was the first to try it out.

 Then Cainan took a turn.  Arlington tried too, but she was a bit big.

At this point, I had to stop taking pictures because we really need to get working on the driveway and stairs.  We did not know at this point that tomorrow my school would cancel yet again (sob).   So we needed to prepare just in case.

We were out until it was dark, and it doesn't look like we did much.  The snow is so heavy, and there is just so much of it.  But, the cars are free.  Mat will be returning to work tomorrow, so I will be home alone with the littles while Arlington is at school.

I wish I could say this was the end of the snow pictures, but alas, it is only January in the north.  Tomorrow my parents arrive (yay) and the kids are very excited.  We hope to have an uneventful weekend.  And I can say - that because Jim Cantore is grounded in Atlanta and can't get up here to our neck of the woods - we just might.