Snow Day!!!

After the freezing rain everything was covered in ice and it was so beautiful

Stunning





Ridley was shivering as our house was in the 50's so I put her winter coat on and covered her up with Oliver's blanket and sleeping bag!

The dogs had a great time frolicking in the street.

Brrrrrr.

I love all their little faces in this picture!

Look at the upper right hand corner of this picture...John & Jerry were throwing huge snow balls at them as they passed.

Uh-oh...look out Uncle John!

Payback time!!!

Berkeley kept making snow balls that weighed almost as much as she does.

Finley tasting snow for the first time!

Gracie fell in exhaustion after so much playing!

These 2 aren't tired yet...another round Dad!!!

Well, we had our first snow of the season last weekend and boy, did it do a number on us. It started out beautiful over the weekend and we didn't mind when it continued on Monday since the kids were off of school for the Martin Luther King holiday. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday every school in the state (except one) was closed due to bad roads. So, Tom was going to go into work a couple hours late to let the snow plows work their magic. He decided that since he was home he would fire up an old John Deere tractor that runs (after about 3 jumps), but no longer mows. So, he tied up an old tube to the back of the John Deere and took the kids on a wild ride up and down the street. As you can see by their little faces they absolutely loved it. Gracie came out and took a spin as well and then a snow ball fight broke out! Jerry came as all the kids were on the tube and I think he didn't want to ruin the moment by going into the office so we let the dogs run free to chase the tractor and play in the snow. They ended up doing most of their work from home that day and the kids had a blast. They came in to rest for a little while and warm up and then round 2 began after Finley went down for her nap.

The news kept mentioning that we were supposed to get freezing rain on Wed night and I kept hoping they were wrong. They weren't. We lost power sometime Wed night and Thursday morning the house was freezing so we headed over to Jer's house for the afternoon to stay warm hoping our power would be restored soon. We lost hope as we watched the news and found out over 100,000 people were without power and all the runways at the airport were closed except one. So around lunch time the boys came back to Jer's for lunch and right in the middle of making lunch his power went out. Long story short, we have been without power for 5 days and just got it back on tonight around 5:00. Verl was kind enough to let us borrow the generator from the restaurant so we had a little bit of light and could watch movies. Our next door neighbor rewired our furnace and ran it through the generator so we could get some heat! We are so thankful!!! We are leaving for Hawaii on Wed. That's right, not tomorrow, but the next day so I am thankful we have power so I can get started on my mountain of laundry. I have never been so excited to do laundry in my whole life. Tom put on his last clean socks & underwear this morning. Wow, going through that sure makes me thankful for all of the modern day conveniences that we have. It's so easy to take it for granted & forget how good we have it until we lose it!