The Great Blizzard of 2011

I wasnt going to post about this since I already published tons of pictures on facebook, but for those of you who dont have a facebook account (ahem...Julie), I guess this can be for you. Besides everyone else was posting about it, and I felt left out. Ryan did remind as well that the blog has taken over as my journal, so I guess for those of you who are sick of hearing about all our snow, than you can just bypass it and leave it for my own personal records.

Anyway, to the point!

It just happened to be on groundhog day, that all of us in southeastern Wisconsin awoke to find ourselves buried in mounds of snow. Sorry Mr.Groundhog...you wont be seeing your shadow this year! Its okay, they warned us it was coming and had already informed us that school would be cancelled and work closed down due to the impending storm. Imagine how disappointed we would have been if there werent feet of snow on the ground in the morning. We were all very excited as if Santa had come and ran to every window to see where the biggest snow drift was. The high winds made it much more interesting and it reminded me of the mountains in Utah...not size, but shape. I wanted to own a shrink ray at that moment and get on some ski's and ski down the huge snow drifts! Upon a second inspection of the windows, we saw this truck stuck in front of our house. I dont know where he was trying to go, or why he thought his truck could make it through the un-plowed 3 ft of snow on the road, but he didnt get very far.

Our kind neighbors helped shovel them out while we just watched and laughed. Ryan did start to get ready to go help, (we arent totally heartless) but by the time he was ready, they were already moving again...backwards the way they had come.

After the snow had stopped, it was time to dig out. Here's Zack in front of the drift that was against our garage door.
Ryan doing a blackflop.

The view from the front of the house. See Zack poking his head up over the top, trying to figure out how to get over it?

There he is. "Help!"

The play area...destined to be turned into a huge snow fort. Check out the fence...the snow is all the way to the top. Awesome!

My poor apple tree, or the top of it at least.

Im guessing the mail wont be delivered today?

Finally, a path cleared. Zack is much happier to be free!

We found the sidewalk!All done, well...except for the road. The plow finally made it by later that day and left us with another 3 ft long and 4-5 ft deep mound to clear. It was kinda cool to have all the neighbors out at the same time, clearing snow, and helping each other. Thanks to our neighbor...the nice one again...who plowed our sidewalk in the front of the house for us. (: Actually, all of our neighbors are very nice.

In the meantime-

We made the most of the hill in our backyard. Ryan is usually the one who gets to do this, but he was stuck working from home, so I got to go out and play!

Katelin Madi

Me and Alissa. We won the contest for going the farthest distance down the hill. Walking back up was a challenge since it was so steep and deep.

Next up...tunnels!

You cant tell from these pictures, but this tunnel was actually about 5 ft long.

My snow buddies:

Caves:
And a little art work to make the fort more homey.

I actually had a lot of fun out there. It reminded me of when I was a kid. Plus, now I know, if I ever get buried in the snow, I have experience in tunneling out of it. Of course, one of the best parts of playing in the snow is coming in to drink hot chocolate! I think it was well deserved this day. The kids ended up getting the next day off of school as well. Unfortunately, the temps dropped down into the negatives, so the kids didnt get as much play time. They did go out for a bit and came in with really rosy cheeks. Thats okay, more hot chocolate! The next day we were given an optional school day. I opted to let them go. No sense in denying them a quality education right? It was all totally for their benefit...really.

Funny thing: its snowing again right now. (: