Speaking of the Snow in October`

As I was looking for the picture I posted last night, I realized that I never got around to blogging about the crazy snow storm we barely survived in October. Well, we survived just fine, having come from Alaska, but our little corner of New Jersey took quite a few days to get back on track. I'm getting ahead of myself though.

Friday the 28th, Josh's mom came up to visit and spent the night so she could spend her birthday (the 29th) with her son with whom she shares a birthday (Josh and his mom have the same birthday), and the rest of us. Our visit was going well until it started snowing on Saturday. Not paying it much mind at first we did all the birthday things we wanted - Josh, the kids and his mom made ice cream, we all played and had fun, we sang and had cake (I didn't have any actual birthday candles so we had to go with this:)

Meanwhile, outside, it just kept snowing and snowing and snowing. Eventually it was decided that it was too bad out there for Josh's mom to leave and she wound up spending a second night with us. A cold, dark night as at 7pm-ish our power went out. And out it stayed until 7am when it came on for about a 1/2hour so we could warm up the place a little (and make some tea!), then it went out again until it came back on for good around 11:20. (We were some of the lucky few - other homes on base lost power for a full 24 hours or so.) This was when Josh's mom decided to head home. Apparently the further south you went, the less severe the storm was. By my parents it had only dropped an inch or so, and by Josh's parents it only rained.

This is his mom's car on Saturday night - notice the darkness behind it as well as all the snow on top of it.

Anyhoo, Sunday was a pretty glorious day, so most of the snow from the roads melted and by evening it seemed like all was well. Except that all wasn't well as I got a call that school had been closed for Monday. Then it was closed on Tuesday. It was closed again on Wednesday. Thursday they finally went back to school, but it was a delayed opening and only for 1st grade on up. Kindergarteners in the state of New Jersey do not have to go to school a certain number of days the rest of the grades do, so they decided to let the little ones stay home. Which, was probably a good thing because what happened was they brought all the kids to Zeke's school, took attendance, then bused them to other schools in the district because Zeke's school still didn't have power! Crazy, right? Friday things were back to normal though and the kids were able to have their Halloween costume parade a few days late and all that jazz.

We definitely had some good times in the snow though. It's nice having snow in New Jersey because it's warmer here and you can let the kids (and their dad) play in the snow longer than 20 minutes, without worrying about frost bite and them freezing to death. Oh Alaska. How I miss you sometimes. Heh.

One day, Finn and I even ventured outside as well. Since Finn was still working on perfecting his walking, he didn't enjoy it too much as he did a bit of falling. But he did have some fun and it was good practice for when (if) we get more snow this winter.

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Ever the creative one, Josh built a little snow fort, and a pretty "cool" castle thing (not pictured):

So, there you have it. Crazy October snow storm. No power all night. Josh's mom stranded here. No school for almost a full week. But lots of snow to have lots of fun in. The end.