I was actually excited last weekend when the snow came back. We had a bunch during Christmas, but it rained for a few days and all that beautiful white stuff melted away. Now...if only it was actually warm enough to go out and play! That's the bummer....when we get the snow, it's too cold to do all the fun stuff like sled, make snowmen, "romp and stomp" as we like to call it. Driving the boys around tonight, my car said it was 1 degree outside and it's supposed to get MUCH worse! I sure do wish that the boys would sit and watch movies because I'm afraid we're not going anywhere tomorrow. I just checked weather.com and the current temp is -11!!!

Anyway - back to last weekend! We did some shoveling on Saturday (as a family!) and it wasn't too bad so Brian suggested heading over to a local sledding hill. Well....by the time we got there, conditions had worsened! We took everyone out, put Brady back in the car almost immediately and let the older boys go down a big hill about 4 times before going in search of some hot lunch!


I love the way the snow settled on the bushes in the front of our house. One looked like it had long streaks of snow on it, the other ones looked dotted with little puffs.

There's daddy yielding the snow blower! He likes to wear goggles when he clears the driveway. I think it's pretty smart even though our friends drove by and called him "scuba Steve".

Here's Logan helping clear the sidewalk. Look at that shoveling form! The kid is a pro already (better be since he's gonna grow up here!)

And then there's Aiden and HIS shovel. In his defense, the other kid's shovel was the backyard and this was pretty resourceful, but I don't think it's going to be much help with the driveway!

Here we are at the sledding hill. This will probably be the last year we need the little baby sled. I think it's been used a grand total of 4 times!

Daddy and the boys.

I had put Logan's hood up on his head until Aiden started yelling "no no...I haffa hold on to Logan's coat!" Logan also totally thought that holding on to the yellow cord in the front meant that he was steering the sled.

With Brian traveling all week it's woman against nature. We got about 2-3 inches yesterday so I put some salt down (per Brian's advice) before the snow even started and then shoveled once after the kids went to bed. This morning, there wasn't much so I ran out and did it again before literally wolfing down my breakfast and rushing the kids out the door so that we could make it to Logan's preschool by 9:00. Good thing the school is literally behind our house or we would have been LATE! I had to take a picture of my handy-work. I seriously don't mind shoveling as long as it's relatively warm out. Last night I had fun clearing the drive. This morning it was FRIGID and windy -boooo!

Driving around today, I was reminded of a wedding we attended in Breckenridge, CO a few years ago. We made it a long weekend, rented a place with about 10 other people, did some skiing etc. I remember looking at the driveways there and noticing how the entrances were sort of walled with these giant piles of snow from the plows and shoveling. Our driveways are starting to look that way! I tried to pretend that I lived in a gorgeous, mountain town for a while today...

the illusion didn't last for long. Finally, here is a video of Aiden getting ready to go shovel last weekend. He has said something really funny and I wanted to get it on camera. Something like "when you want to go outside...you say 'mommie...i can go outside? and she will say yes!'" He was also calling his snow pants a "snow diaper". At the end of this video, he says "let's go" in Chinese. It's a great side-effect from the boys watching the show Ni Hao Kai-lan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plmZm_b-EDM&feature=channel_page