Snow Fun and Videos!

We had our third highest snowfall on record for the month of January this year. We got over 30 inches of snow in one month!! Ben said he feels like all he does is shovel! Side story about our shovel: I am very proud of it! It was one of the last shovels left in the city after the blizzard of 2011. I search high and low for it and finally talked Home Depot into selling their own store's shovel to me! It had a crack in it but I got a good deal and we have definitely gotten every last penny out of it!

 

So...snow. We got more this weekend. We haven't been able to enjoy the snow too much because we've had these terrible cold snaps and I am not about to send my boys outside when it's -2 or worse! Thankfully, it was 30 degrees on Saturday and in the afternoon I told the boys to go outside and get some of that energy out!! Eliana went out, too, for a bit but she gave up and went in before I whipped the camera out.

 

They decided to dig a tunnel...

 

Zakkai working on one end...

And Samuel on the other!

He's so cute with his missing tooth! He is about to lose another one AND he is about to turn 7. I can hardly believe it. In our minds, he's still 5....

Concentrating hard! They got stuck with some ice in the middle.

Hoping to meet in the middle eventually!

Yesterday for lunch I made bread bowls for the first time with Broccoli Cheese Soup! Aren't they cute?  I have always wanted to make bread bowls and I found a fairly easy recipe on pinterest. I mixed up the dough before church and let it rise while we were gone. They rose a lot higher than I intended so next time I would make them a little smaller and make mini ones for the kiddos.

All in all, though, I was impressed! And it tasted good, too:)

Eliana is our little Canary Bird. She clams up and gets really soft-spoken when we are out in public but at home? She sings and sings and SINGS all day long! She sings real songs and songs she makes up. Or a combination of both!

She was so wild after church for some reason and was running around and around our house singing at the top of her lungs! Video to follow...

Ben has been working so much lately so when he is home, you can almost always find one of our little people hanging on him like this.....We all are happier when we can all be together!

Her hair is getting so long!

She pointed her bossy little finger at me and said, "YOU need to stop taking pictures!"

Silly boy!

And here's our wild girl; for proof that she does talk even if she pretends not to in public....Please excuse the mess. Things completely fall apart on the weekends! And that's what I am working on undoing now....(after my blogging break...)

 

Have a great Monday!

The Storm of '67 and other news..

I am really content to be at home right now, with the blinds closed, pretending that there are not feet of snow outside wreaking havoc on the city.

I can sum it up for you: Parking=nightmare, Driving=nightmare. So the moral of the story is.....stay home.

Z, who is home on Fridays now, accompianied E and I to the store to get some much needed contact solution (and a few other "necessary" Target items) and then we skyped with my sister in CO before taking lovely naps (except me...boo) and then venturing out into the hellish streets to pick up S and then Daddy.

So, I am de-stressing after my frustrating driving and parking experiences with a little chocolate. You know what they say; A little chocolate a day keeps the stress away!

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And I leave you with some pictures of the storm of '67. Remember, the storm that I was in? ;)

Terrible downtown streets!

The LSD of the old days...

See? There's me scraping off my car!

Hope you're having a lovely Friday night!

Snow Day

We had a much calmer day today than yesterday:) I went back and watched my blizzard videos just to make sure it really happened! (as if the 20+ inches outside isn't an obvious sign!)

The boys got haircuts today and a long bubble bath (and unfortunately, later I realized that Samuel is allergic to the bubble bath, hence an itchy rash all over his body:( ), we played with S's lite brite, playdough...the baby slept great!

And now we're back to school tomorrow....Ben worked for 1 hr 15min to get our car freed from the snow so I should be able to get out tomorrow! The piles of snow outside are HUMONGOUS!

Here are some pics from yesterday...

Our neighboring street

We walked down to the main street to see if it was clear. Not much traffic!

More street shots!

Zakkai came out and pretty much threw himself into the snow:) He had a blast!

As you can see, the boys were bundled up really well. But that didn't stop an elderly ukrainian lady from leaning out her window to yell at me (in ukrainian, mind you but I got the gist....) about having the boys out! Seriously, I'm pretty sure 30 minutes of fresh air and exercise isn't going to hurt them!

Zakkai found himself a little hold to sit in. Too funny!

My new favorite picture of Zakkai! Pure joy:)

Checking out the area between buildings

A neighbor man making a sidewalk for everyone. He stopped and said, "Remember the storm of '67?" Have I really aged that much this past year? And it wasn't like he kept going with his story; he honestly wanted a reply! I had to break the news that alas, I wasn't born yet...

Samuel, are you in there somewhere?

I made it!! Conquering the snow mountain:)

A car..I feel bad for those people that have to dig that out!

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It'll be nice to break out of our prison and get out into the world and see what it's like tomorrow! Cold and white:)

A New Blizzardy Day:)

Whew! We survived the Chicago Blizzard of 2011! It was insane last night with the winds and even thunder and lightening! It was better than watching a movie:) The snow has finally stopped and the sun is out now! It snowed for about 22 hours straight, most of the time very heavily.

After a lovely breakfast of smoothies (or "special drinks" as we call them) and delicious peach muffins, I bundled my snotty, sneezy, coughing, cagey boys up and took them out into the snow to have a peek!

This is what we found:

The Blizzard of 2011

Wow, wow and more wow! It is awfully exciting to be apart of history:) I mean, a blizzard bad enough to close down Chicago Public Schools for the first time in 12 years?

I braved the blizzard for a mad minute a little while ago just for you! Aren't I nice?

It's gotten even worse since then and we've watched cars getting stuck, people struggling to walk and and obviously crazy man try to clean his sidewalk.

Zakkai kept saying, "There a blizzard! A blizzard, Samuel! Do you want to see the blizzard, mommy?"

I give you....The Blizzard:)

And 2 hours later...