2016 Blizzard!

We have lived in Maryland for 5 winters now. Every winter, there are rumors of big snow storms. They never hit. I think the most I have seen is around 6" and that ironically came with a forecast of light snow. But, year after year, we have been told to hunker down and prepare, which we do. For what turns out to be nothing. However, this year was different. The weather channel actually issued a blizzard watch on Wednesday--48 full hours before the storm was to start! I obsessively checked weather.com and local forecasts. The range of snow changed, but was never less than a 6" minimum. Maximums at time exceeded 2 feet. I felt like this might really be a big storm. We were all pretty excited. Although, my excitement was tampered by a worry for the homeless. We had seem some during our day in DC and their situation was fresh in my mind.

School was canceled Friday and we had a fun morning, making one last trip to Target (I think it was our 3rd "last trip"). We got our junk food provisions, gassed up the car, picked up some snow boots for Luke and went to the library to make sure everyone was stocked up with good books. We ordered some Papa Johns for lunch (which we rationed to ensure leftovers for dinner). The flakes started falling by early afternoon and we all went out to play. The slides on the playset turn rocket fast with the snow and the kids had fun. Poor Luke was quite unprepared when he went down the curly slide and flew a good two feet at the end. Fortunately, he landed in soft snow. Some neighbors came over to play and everyone had a good afternoon.

I love this picture of Luke. He looks so big!

Early in the storm.

Just the right depth for perfect snow angels!

Saturday was cold and windy. Luke was coughing, so we made him stay inside. I measured about 10" of snow at 9 AM. It was hard to get an accurate reading because the wind created spots of super high snow and spots where you can still see the grass. My educated guess is that when all is said and done, we probably had about a foot of accumulation, maybe slightly more.The neighborhood was out in full force shoveling and we got our driveway done with some help from our neighbors. It was nice to see everyone out helping each other.

Kara built some sort of "fort". This was Saturday morning. We can no longer see that bush.

Jack trying to dig us out.

I didn't actually take this picture, it was on our neighborhood Facebook page, but this went on throughout our great neighborhood on Saturday.

By night, the driveway was covered again. We watched Night at the Museum 3, enjoyed brownie sundaes and relaxing inside. We had an hour of quiet reading time, which (almost) everyone enjoyed. I read a great book about Lafayette. It was in the children's section and was 100 pages. I should check out the kid's section more often for my nonfiction reading! It had just enough depth to be informative, without all the detailed facts that can bog down my reading. I joked with Jack that I finally know more about a Revolutionary War figure than he does (which will only last until he reads the book, but still...). We never got around to game playing, but that's on today's agenda.

So far, it has been a fun time together. I am really glad that we finally have snowsuits and boots for all the kids. I am also super happy that we never lost power during the blizzard; the wind was vicious at times. Of course, it's not really over. It will be interesting to see how long the kids are out of school. My guess is that they will go back on Wednesday.

We made a donation to our local homeless shelter and my hope is that everyone was able to stay off the streets. 

Our back yard this morning. (We had this great idea of doing periodic photos on our deck, but the wind never let the snow accumulate much there.)  The little snowman is one Kara built earlier in the week with our 1" snow surprise. 

Bottom of our basement stairs.