Digging out from the Blizzard

 We woke up this morning to a beautiful day!!  Sunny and calm and snow EVERYWHERE!!  We ended up getting just under 30 inches!  So much snow!!!!We spent the day shoveling out sidewalks, cars and even the street!!  Our street is one of very few in Arlington that is plowed - so we feel VERY lucky for that!  The end of the street isn't plowed so we tried to go sledding but it was just too deep!!  If we end up staying here, this could be the most snow that we will ever see!!

 Brendan's car at the end of the driveway!

 our sidewalk - that's a lot of shoveling!!

 playing snowball catch with the neighbor's dog!

 Emmy and Aoife!

 Daddy and Declan!

 Aoife trying to sled in the excavator's track!

 Our plowed street!

 The house at sunset!

This picture is from Emmy's teacher - a crazy look at what happens when the roads aren't plowed!!

That night we pulled the firepit out and had a street party with our neighbors!!  It was so fun and we even had a TV outside and got to watch the AZ/Carolina game!

Me and Mary Ege!

Snowzilla! The blizzard of 2016

 We have survived!!  The biggest storm in 10 years!!  This is what it looked like around 1 pm on Friday:

And here is what it looked like on Saturday morning around 10 am!  That's probably about 12 - 18 inches!!

 We have a tradition of cinnamon rolls on snowdays...so...a beautiful plate of delicious cinnamon rolls!  I'm still trying to perfect the recipe but it's something that no one minds the recipe testing!!  I used this recipe this time.  They were delicious but the dough was tough to roll out - but very tender out of the oven!!

 Yup - even Declan thought they were good - an he pretty much eats nothing these days!!

 Here's Aoife, Norah and Emmy going out to play in the storm.  They are standing on the street behind the bank that the plow left and this was only midday!

 Here's Greg McShane, our neighbor, snowblowing a path to the trashcans!!

 In typical threenager style, Declan threw an absolute fit while we got him dressed to go outside.  I knew that he would LOVE it as soon as he got out into the snow and I was right!  He didn't even want to come in and stayed outside for hours!

 Declan shoveling the walk and Brendan making snow angels!

 Aidan and Declan building a fort.

 Keeping the driveway clear!

 a view of the backyard in the afternoon!

 24 hour progression!

First snow of 2016

 We got about an inch of snow last night and the kids were so excited to go outside and play in it!  We are supposed to get a couple of feet of snow tomorrow so this was a tiny little preview of how things are going to be!

5th Grade Chorus and Band Concert

 Aidan had the 5th grade Advanced Band and 5th Grade Chorus concert last night. They've been working so hard since school began and they did a great job!  Unfortunately during the concert it started snowing and it was a huge mess getting home.  It took us almost an hour and a half to get the two miles home.  Luckily I have a rental this week while my car is getting repaired after getting hit while I was parked in a parking lot.  They gave us a Durango which was AMAZING in the snow - got us home safely with no problems while the rest of Arlington was sliding up and down the hills.  Seriously have to consider getting an SUV when it's time to get a new car. If we had been in the minivan last night, we would have had to walk home in the cold.  That would've been NOT fun at all.

Trying to get out of the parking lot! The best decision was to sit tight for a half an hour while everyone else crashed into each other!