And The Theme For Today Is Shoveling Snow!

Up To My Thighs

See the Tunnel?

Our Dad To The Rescue!

Top of Van

We were surprised yesterday morning when we awoke to about a foot of snow, and it was still falling. We shoveled a little bit – mostly to get to the chicken coop, but we saved the rest for today.

Today, there was about 29 inches, and we shoveled our driveway. Just when we couldn’t take much more shoveling, our neighbor loaned our dad his tractor.

We were outside shoveling for a total of five and a half hours. We were all very tired upon returning inside, and we ordered Chinese takeout. Thank goodness they went to work!

In Anticipation of Snowstorm Jonas

Right now, it’s snowing!

We are fairly sure we are not going to get any more snow than we’ve ever gotten before (despite all the hype) but we are hoping for close to 3 feet anyway.

We are being told to stay off the roads from now until Sunday.

I think that’s good advice considering what happened on Wednesday night. It snowed less than one inch, and yet my sister sat in traffic for two and a half hours going five miles per hour because this is what the DC Metro area looked like.

All of the red icons are accidents!

Some people sat in their cars for more than 5 hours and eventually just deserted their cars and walked home 🙂

We’re just wondering what it’s going to look like when there has been a foot of snow rather than an inch.

In any case, people are all stocked up for the big storm – Snowstorm Jonas is what they’ve called this one 😀 Yesterday my dad went to buy some potting soil because it’s time to start our seedlings. He said all the snow shovels and ice melt bags were flying off the shelves. He also saw one woman buying a generator for nine hundred dollars. That led me to think that perhaps the weathermen have a deal with local stores. The weathermen hype up all of the snowstorms, and the stores give them some of their profits. It’s definitely plausible and it would be profitable for all involved – except the consumer, of course.

Anyway, have fun in the snow if you are getting some! We’re definitely looking forward to it!

8 Hours of Slipping, Sliding, and Looking at Crashes

Today, despite what we saw happening with the weather outside, and all the predictions, my dad and I decided to go to Philadelphia, as we often do on weekends. We thought that since the weathermen are usually wrong, it wouldn’t be as bad as they were saying. We decided to go on and see how the roads were.

We found that they were pretty bad, but we went anyway, and we did see some nice things, and it did take us a while.

First of all, our average speed was about 30 miles per hour, and we rarely got over 40, though at one point we were going 50 (very briefly). We saw a lot of stuck cars, cars that had pulled over, and also a lot of accidents. In general, they weren’t too bad, but we saw one car on fire and couldn’t tell if the people were all right.

Maryland cleans their roads well (one of the things for which taxpayers are grateful in that God-forsaken state), but we noticed that when we entered Pennsylvania, even the major highway I-95 looked unplowed. That was really surprising since the snow was about 4 inches deep on the road, but we have noticed in the past that Pennsylvania is never in too much of a hurry to clean their roads.

You may be wondering how long our normal 2 and a half hour drive took us.

It took 8 hours in all. Yep. Even though it was an eventful drive, I dread getting into the car again. And, of course, it snowed a foot in Maryland, and I wasn’t there.

The First Really Good Snow of the Year!

Last night it snowed about 20 in and it is supposed to continue snowing until 11:00 tonight (after a little bit of rain). As it is, it’s a lot of snow, but we hope that by the time it’s done tonight there will be at least two feet. Unfortunately, I’m getting over a sickness right now, but I should be better tomorrow.

We took some pictures of the snow because it looked funny piled up on various things like trash cans, bushes, etc.. The snow even covered one of the cars! We hope you enjoy the snow (if you got any) and the pictures!

by John

Building a Snowman

After Sunday’s snow, it snowed again today and accumulated another 3 or 4 inches. Since school was out, we had time to go outside and play. When Dink and I go out into the snow, we usually want to build snow forts and then proceed to peg each other with snowballs, but unfortunately when we do that, the forts take hours to build and by then we’re cold, tired, and hungry. Then we go in, drink some hot cocoa, and decide, “Well, we don’t really want to go back outside. Besides, our forts will still be there tomorrow.” But the next day the sun usually comes out and melts our forts.

So since we didn’t want to spend several hours of the day making snow forts that would never get used, we decided to build a snowman. We wanted to make him pretty big, and when we got done, we gave him a mouth, buttons, eyes, a nose, arms, and even some hair!

He looks pretty good from a distance, but when you get closer Dink and I think he looks just a little creepy. Anyway, we got some pictures of the snowman and some pictures of the snow and we hope you like them!