Extra Curricular Activity

I think my friend Britt, who moved here last summer with her family, put it best when she said, "We finally figured out that school here is an extra-curricular activity." After no snow in December I thought we were going to get away with an easy winter. However, this being our fourth snow day in 3 weeks, I must admit I was wrong. When you move here you just think to yourself, "Snow happens all over the world and people deal with it, what's the deal with New England?" Everything comes to a stand still. We woke up to 3 inches on Tuesday (still had school), no big deal right? WRONG! What is normally a 25-30 minute commute took Adam 90 minutes!! School buses were late picking up children and everything was a disaster. I don't know what it is, but I do know it's how it is and there is nothing I can do to change it. So think of us New Englanders in the lovely month of June when your children are enjoying the summer months. At this point, school will extend to June 21.

Here is our predicted 3-5 inches of snow. I often wonder what would happen if doctors were as precise as weathermen.

Adam and the boys spent an hour shoveling this morning. Sam was pretty smart and opted to wait until the shoveling was done and then headed outside to play. I'm sure if the other boys knew that was an option they would have chosen (however, it wasn't for them). Adam said the boys asked if the baby was going to have to help shovel and then were utterly dismayed to figure out that by the time she's old enough to help, Joshua and Jacob probably won't even be at home.

These are the piles on the side of our ever shrinking driveway.

The picture below is from Monday. On Monday the high was 4 degrees. That's right, 4 degrees. When I put Joshua and Jacob on the bus at 8:45 it was still -8. When I dropped Andrew off at 12:30 we had just hit zero. The picture below is of Andrew's beach day at school, which was on Monday. I hope you are all catching the irony here. All the kids wore their beach clothing, brought beach toys, goggles, etc. The preschool cranked up the heat and brought in a bunch of sand (can you imagine the clean - up? - just one of the reasons I LOVE this preschool), and let the kids have fun in the sun, or at least the heat.

Great neighbors!

Uh, DeAnn, can I borrow your snow blower? Adam is another state and we have somewhere around 15 inches of snow and it's still snowing. There's been a lot of blowing so it's difficult to tell for sure, but when I walked outside it was up to my knees.

Fortunately, we have great neighbors. They have a snow blower that initially wasn't working. So their teenage son and a friend came over with shovels and told me to go back inside (for which I was SOO grateful. Normally I don't mind shoveling. However, it was causing pain in places I shouldn't push through). In the end the snow blower came back to life and for now we have a relatively clear driveway. I'm so thankful for great neighbors!!