Snow and Ice!

Thursday afternoon is when our big snowfall decided to come. It started while the kids were in school in the early afternoon and snowed almost non-stop all night. I didn't measure but we probably got about 5-6 inches by Friday morning. Thankfully, we found out Thursday night that they were canceling school on Friday. Perfect timing since it's the weekend! I warned the kids that we were going to be shoveling the driveway and sidewalks in the morning. Curtis had braved the wintry roads to drive to Moses Lake for a work trip, so he wasn't there. Before we could get out there to shovel, our neighbor, Paul, beat us to it with his snow blower. I was so thankful and I'm sure the kids were too! It took him about 30 minutes or so to get our driveway, walkway and sidewalks done. It would have taken us hours to do it by hand with shovels. I had to shovel a little bit of snow anyway and it was heavy! We have awesome neighbors on both sides of us!

This is what it looked like Thursday evening. The girls and Milo were having lots of fun.

This is looking out our front window Friday morning. All tracks covered and you can't see where the grass meets the driveway.

And the back porch. All of the footprints were covered from the night before where the girls and Milo played.

Our neighbor, Paul, snow blowing our driveway.

Standing in our front yard and ready to do some sledding!

I really didn't want to, nor did I think I would need to drive that day but of course Jack needed a ride to a friends' house so he could go sledding. I drove the truck instead of the van. After I dropped him off, I tried to get out of that neighborhood and got stuck when trying to go up hill. So, I tried to back up and turn around to go the other way but got stuck again.  I knew I had 4-wheel drive but wasn't sure how to get it on exactly. I was able to talk to Curtis on the phone and he helped me figure it out. Thank goodness! As soon as I got it switched, I was able to get right out.

I had told Charlotte earlier in the week that maybe she should invite her friend Ashlee over to hang out on the weekend. Well, with it being a snow day, Charlotte wanted to do some sledding or playing in the snow with her. Her youngest sister is friends with Alice. Since they are friends from the ward (McShanes) it turned out to be a family thing, at least for them. We walked across the street to the middle school because they had some hills to sled on. Our neighbors who live behind us happened to be walking over to do the exact same thing. So, Charlotte got to sled with two friends, Ashlee and Stella. 

Sledding on our own little hill while waiting for friends to come over. We'll never have to build a slide in our driveway again!

Milo was loving the snow, but I had him on a long leash. He made me drop my phone once while I was trying to take pictures.

Sledding at the middle school.

I let Milo run free here, but he kept getting in the way and nearly getting hit all of the time. Silly puppy! I left the long leash on him and sometimes he would pick it up and carry it in his mouth. It was cute.

I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked at the middle school because I was busy taking videos and just enjoying watching the kids. After playing in the snow for about an hour I invited the McShanes over for hot cocoa and cider. They accepted and came to hang out for a while longer.  Curtis even made it home and walked over to the middle school right before we were done sledding. When I say "we", I mean the girls. Ha ha. By the end of playing in the snow, Alice's boots had slid off twice and on the 2nd time I discovered that she had a hole in the bottom of one. Those boots were getting worn out and falling apart on the inside anyway, so it was time to get new boots for her. Alice and her friends had also gone to our backyard ahead of everyone else and Alice climbed our tall chain link fence and ended up tearing her snow pants up. Time for new pants also! I don't know why she was climbing the fence. Saturday afternoon I did some looking at Goodwill and Walmart for boots and pants. I was lucky to find any her size, but I did find some boots at Goodwill and pants at Walmart. It was slim pickings but we got what he needed. 

The boys also had a D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) game session on Saturday. It's the first one they've done in months, so they made it a long one. They played for about 6 hours I think (11-5).

Saturday morning, we were asked to chaperone the youth stake dance that night but a little while later a message was sent out that it was cancelled due to dangerous driving conditions. There had been a little melting of snow during the day but then by evening it started to rain, freezing rain, and that equaled ice. By the time we were going to bed Saturday night, we got news that our church meetings for Sunday would be cancelled as well. The kids didn't find out until Sunday morning after we fixed them a nice breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, toasted bagels and orange juice. Then we warned them that we were still going to have church at home and told them to be dressed and ready by 10:30. We met in the front living room where Charlotte gave her talk that she was going to give in primary and then I taught them "The Iron Rod" from the hymn book. Curtis then led a little discussion, and we all took turns reading verses from 1 Nephi 10. 

After our home church was done, we all went to have some free time. That's when I finally did my last two blog posts before this one. The girls played a matching game with Curtis and the boys took naps. No surprise there! After dinner that evening, we wanted to play a game and it ended up being hide and seek in the dark. We haven't played that game since before we moved, and it was a lot of fun! Milo sometimes gave people away though, ha ha. One time he hid with me behind the recliner but then he took off when he heard Curtis coming. I was found pretty quick that time. After that game, we settled down at the dining room table to play Life. Garrett was done and went to his room though. I didn't really want to play Life and since we had too many players, I doubled up with Alice. She did most of the work because I had a word game I was playing on my phone. The kids like to help me with that game also. It made for an unusually fun weekend!