Snowfall

Wow. That was a lot of snow that came basically out of nowhere. No forecast about snow or anything. The only thing we got were some warnings about freezing rain and then it was suppose to simply turn to rain later in the night. What we ended up getting was a lot of snow all morning and for a bit of the afternoon. And it was coming down in huge flakes too. The entire time it was snowing the weather forecasters kept coming on telling us how we were just going to get freezing rain (you would think after five hours of it snowing they would catch a clue, but they didn't). I'll go ahead and apologize in advance for all the pictures I'm about to post. It's a lot of pictures today, but lucky for you no artsy ones. With as many of the kids as I'm putting up, I didn't want to completely bore people (yea, yea, I know, "too late for that").


I didn't measure how much snow we got, but both Scott and Barry both seem to think it was about six inches, so I'll go with their estimate (anything over three inches seems like a huge amount to me). And it was good packing snow too (perfect for making snowmen).




I kept putting off going out to shovel the driveway because I was sure it was going to stop at any moment. The snow did eventually stop around two thirty and I headed out to shovel at that point. The kids were still eating lunch, but the plan was for them to come out too. About half an hour later it turned into light rain for a bit and about a half an hour after that it really started raining. Unfortunately the kids only made it out just before the first light rain started, so they didn't get to play out in the snow too much today.






I piled most of the snow from the driveway between the two forts I had built for them last time. Quinn actually used that as a sledding hill for a bit. Catherine meanwhile initially was just digging in the snow around the fort, tossing the snow back onto the sidewalk or driveway I had just cleared. But after being politely asked not to do that, she was very careful from then on not to put any more snow on the shoveled areas.






Eventually Catherine and Quinn both started building mini snowmen on their snow forts. Then Quinn started using Catherine's mini snowmen as target practice for his snowball throwing.




I'm not sure how it all started (I think it was about the time Quinn was targeting Catherine's snowmen), but at some point a snowball fight broke out between Ginger and Quinn.










Sadly my water proof ski gloves were completely soaked after shoveling the driveway and clearing off my car, so I missed out on the majority of the snowball fight except where I got hit by a few friendly fire incidents. The snowball fight eventually ended when Ginger managed to hit Quinn right in the face. In her defense, I think she was aiming for his chest and he ducked, I have it on video, but it's still hard to see what happened with the crappy resolution on video from the camera.


This was one of my favorite shots from today. It's Catherine throwing a snowball at Ginger, but if you look closely you'll see the snowball is actually behind Catherine's head (and even though you can't tell from the picture, heading in the other direction). You probably had to be there to appreciate the humor in it.


Eventually though once it started raining pretty hard we had to call it a day and head inside. The snow wasn't that great from what I could tell for sledding, but I'm hoping the snow sticks around some so that we can at least try sledding tomorrow or the next day out back. It's not suppose to get really cold tonight, so we shouldn't have the same situation as last time with the melting snow turning into a sheet of ice. And since they've had since this afternoon the roads should be clear by the morning. My guess would be the kids will have school tomorrow, it's just a matter of whether it will be on time or not. As of right now the schools aren't reporting a closing or delay, but they may wait till the last minute since I believe if they miss any more days they end up having to make them up at the end of the year.