blizzard....

It started snowing here on Tuesday, just before I needed to pick Clara up from school. Once it started, it didn't stop until Wednesday morning. And then it started again with a couple hours of lake enhanced snow.

So, Wednesday morning we were out in our pj's walking the dogs and inspecting the snow drifts...
And then, what started as a walk.... turned into a run....

Mango the snow dog....
She has a love/hate relationship with snow. I'm thinking that she wishes she was born a husky or another similar breed so she could stay out in it longer. She loves playing in it, but she gets too cold too fast!

After we got the dogs back in, Clara and Alex suited up and started work on their fort.

Here's Clara pointing out where the fort will be built...
Adding more snow to the pile...
And there's Alex...
his job was to take the snow from the deck....
and shovel it down to Clara so she could add it to the fort....
Then it was time for a mid-morning snack break. Here are the cinnamon rolls I made...
... this was my first attempt at homemade cinnamon rolls and they turned out really yummy!! A fun treat for Clara's first official snow day!

Later Jeff called me out to check out the garage. This is what we saw when we opened the garage door....
After the cinnamon rolls, the kids had gone next door to watch a movie with the neighbors. Once the movie was over, they decided to all come out and play in the snow.

The boys on the block....
and the girls....
Clara girl...
Then Jeff called us out to the alley. A portion of the alley was so deep and drifted that they weren't even going to attempt to dig it out. He thought that would be a great place for the kids to play. So we gathered up our stuff and moved back there.

Sledding... city kid style.....


Most of the men from our block had all joined together that afternoon with a common goal... to dig a way out of the alley. It was a little like a snow day block party! It was nice to catch up with the people we knew already and also meet some of our neighbors for the first time.

Here's Jeff doing his part....
MAN DOWN!! Alex wiped out....
A snow covered, post wipe out, Alex...
Trying out a new sledding "hill"....
Clara planted herself, face first, into a drift....
Alex off in the deep snow....
And Clara maturely handling the fact that she had just cracked her sled in half....
They had such a great time!!! I thought we would never get them to come back in!! They loved all of the digging, tunneling and "sledding". When we finally got them in, we had a nice dinner of black bean soup and cornbread before they took hot showers and got into warm pj's. Since Clara didn't have school again the next day, we let them each pick a movie from Netflix instant streaming (love the instant movies from netflix!) and have a movie night!