Monday, February 26, 2007

What To Do with 18 Inches of Snow

Measure it!
Rowan and Gemma measured snow fall amounts in three places in the yard Sunday afternoon and got an average of 18 inches of snow fall. Our official city total was 15 inches. It wasn't that light, fluffy "story-book" snow - it was wet and heavy. Sunday afternoon's snow came in the form of wet glops that plopped onto our heads!


Sled in it!

Build with it!
This stuff was awesome packing snow - great for making snow caves - here's Gemma with her feet sticking out of a snow cave the girls built.
Shovel it!
It took us about two hours on Saturday morning and nearly 3 on Sunday to shovel. Jani forged a path off the driveway to our garbage cans and recycling bin.
And shovel some more!!
Don't ya' just love the mound of hard pack that the snow plow leaves at the end of the driveway! Impressive pile of snow that Rowan is standing on, wouldn't you say?

Figure out where to put it all!!
Jani is six feet tall, so that gives some sense of how tall our snow piles are. We are due to get more on Thursday. I don't know where to put more!!


And have gratitude for one's situation!!
I'm glad to say this is NOT our car!! There were several plowed in like this on our street. Our college-aged neighbors, snow shovel-less, borrowed our shovels to dig themselves out. They had no shovels. One wonders how you can manage to live in Wisconsin in the winter without a shovel!! Borrow one form your neighbors I guess! Anyway, they did finish shoveling the snow pack at the end of our driveway as a "thank-you" for the shovel loan which was great!!

And celebrate Gemma's Half Birthday!
On Saturday Gemma turned 5.5! We celebrated with her favorite meal - pasta! The table decor is her design - a Halloween tablecloth of black with glittering spider webs, candles, our fancy flatware and her Fiestaware tea service that matches our Fiestaware dishes.
At 5.5, she has lost two teeth (both on the bottom), just brought home a great report card from kindergarten and had a blast playing in all of the snow with her sissy.
Many gratitudes!
While some complained about our big snow fall, I had lots to be grateful for-
*A nice warm home to come to after our shoveling and play time - I got in lots of knitting this weekend!!
*The laughter of kids having a BLAST in all that snow!!
*A healthy body to be able to shovel it all.
*A strong partner to help.
*Above average winter snow fall to help restore our water table, so our mother earth can be beautiful and green in the spring and summer.
*The knowledge that it is late February and Spring Equinox will be upon us before we know it!







2 comments:

Sonya said...

Another great update!

Personally I'm loving the snow. We were supposed to get those amounts, but "lucked" out with only 3-6" of that heavy stuff. Fortunately our neighbor moved it with his 4-wheeler.

It looks like everyone had a great time playing in the snow. How cool that the fun continued inside by celebrating Gemma's 1/2 birthday. Happy 1/2 birthday Gemma!

Daria Schaffnit said...

Our snow was good packing snow, too, but I couldn't get anyone to go play in it with me! My car looked much like the car you show, except it wasn't so much plowed in as drifted in! All but the big piles melted last week and today, we are getting more snow! It's gorgeous!

Happy half-birthday to Miss G! I love celebrating my half-birthday. I usually do cupcakes instead of a cake...tiny ones iced in pink with little star sprinkles...fairy cakes!