Big ol' blizzard

Time for some snow pictures. We got a blizzard the day after Christmas, which apparently isn't real common here in New Jersey. A "perfect storm" (if you will) of conditions that included very cold weather (making the snow very light), crazy strong winds, and a dumping of almost 2 feet of snow in many areas caused a lot of headaches for a lot of people. We managed to run out to Target the morning before it started to spend Christmas gift cards and pick up some last minute bread and milk, then we hunkered down to watch the snow fall (and fall and fall and fall).


This is what we woke up to the next morning. You can see the snow is up to the bottom of the chairs.



Jim kindly got out and shoveled a path so Lucy could take care of business that morning. The snow is over Jim's knees and over Lucy's back. She wasn't too pleased by this turn of events in her backyard.



A neighbor had parked a car in front of our house, and we watched it slowly get buried deeper and deeper as the snow fell. This is what it looked like the next morning - a combination of snow falling and snowplows plowing. We still have a rectangular parking space in front of our house where they shoveled it out a few days later. I think it's quite the coveted spot at school pick up time.



While Jim was working on the driveway I took the kids across the street to the big hill behind the school for a little sledding (this picture was taken with the kids standing on our driveway with just a path shoveled through, so you can see how deep the snow was). But it wasn't a very good trip. The snow was light and fluffy and not packed yet, plus the school was not plowed so it was VERY slow going to trudge through the snow there. We were all trying to create sledding paths on the new snow. Plus the wind was still really strong, so you got a lot of big blasts of snow blowing in your face. So after a bit the kids and I returned to our warm, cozy home for big mugs of hot chocolate.


The next day the wind had died down so we headed across town to the big sledding hill (along with half the population it seemed). The kids had a great time, and luckily the cheap sleds I'd bought Sunday at Target were light enough that there were no complaints about lugging them back up the hill.







One last picture. These are our little lollipop snowmen decoration in front of our house. This is about four days after the big snow once we'd had a lot of melting. For a couple days they were totally covered in snow - the only indication that something was there was every evening starting at 4pm there were four very faint lights glowing in that spot, changing colors and patterns. Finally now, more than a week after the snowfall, you can spot some ground at the bottom of them.