Sledding

Major snow again

Why not add insult to injury and have Mother Nature gives us 2 feet more snow on top of the almost 30 inches we got, oh, four days ago?

My little snow bunnies don't mind it though!

Modeling their new hats from Onkteb and Aunt Gail

This snow is thick, wet, packing snow, unlike this weekend's. Addie and Ben each started with a little snowball and kept rolling, rolling, rolling.

They chose to play on the swing set today. Here's Addie swinging on her belly. Notice how her belly is basically touching the snow? Yeah, that's cause we have nearly 3 feet of snow there.

There has been one casualty of this storm...the big tree in our backyard which protects us from the building behind us has had several branches break under the weight of the snow and the blizzard winds. I'm kind of worried about how it'll look once the snow is all gone. Luckily it's far enough from our house that it's not a threat to the house, but our poor shed (aka the holder of Nourie World) may not make it out ok.

I'm sure there'll be more to share later on.

Anytime the snow wants to stop, we're ok with that. Unfortunately, the blizzard warning is through midnight and it's only 4:15pm.

Can you see how Addie's different?

Compare her to her classmates....see what you can figure out.

In case you can't tell, my daughter's mouth is the only one that moves through each song. She's a singer at heart, and as you'll see, not really a dancer, but she has fun, which is the most important.

Playing in the snow

Ready to go boarding.

The snow was so deep, the kids couldn't get through it easily at all.

Brian made some trails for them to sled down.

And then you can see, it was quite difficult to get back up.

After sledding was over, it was time for the snowman making to begin.

We ended up with a Mommy snowman, a Ben snowman and an Addie snowman.

Whole lotta snow!

Well the first storm of 2010 came with a vengeance. We ended at 28.9 inches officially, but with the drifts we have some areas with 4 feet of snow...as you'll see below. The fence around our backyard really makes for some nice drifts for the snow to settle in.

As the snow was still coming down, the swing set got buried deeper and deeper.

Once the snow stopped at about 3pm, Brian and I headed out to shovel. This is our first use of the incredible Yukon shovel that Jeremy and Amanda gave us for Christmas (and swear by). It's basically the size of 4 shovels and takes about 3/4 of the stress off your body as you push. Pretty amazing. We were the talk of the neighborhood with it.

Here's a good picture for perspective. That's Brian once he shoveled outside of our driveway gate, so we could attack the driveway. That's a 4 foot deep blanket of snow across the entire driveway.

Can you imagine how long that took us to clear? About 3 hours. The biggest problem was figuring out where the heck we were going to put all of the snow!

Looking up our street after we had been out there for 4 hours straight. A nice man on his bobcat came by and did one pass-through for the street.

All overnight the city crews were out plowing and then hauling the snow away. It's too much for them to leave on the street just by plowing, so they have to pick up the plowed snow in dump trucks and then dump it into the river.

The playing in the snow will be intense today!!! And we're slated for 10 more inches of snow from Tuesday to Wednesday!

Happy birthday to Pam!

You've gotta love the ad libbing. Glad my girl has her priorities straight. And love Ben hiding throughout the whole song!

We hope your day was wonderful and we're so glad you're back in our lives!!

Missing in Action (or the Bahamas!)

Because I'm incredibly blessed to have the most wonderful husband in the entire world, this past week we spent on a cruise to the Bahamas! It was my surprise destination 30th birthday trip (remember Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon last year for him). Until we landed in Orlando International airport on Sunday morning, I didn't know where we were headed. Brian had packed one bag of cold weather clothes for me and one bag of warm weather clothes; so I really had no idea where we were headed. Luckily he brought the correct bag on the trip!! Once we landed in Orlando, I wondered if it wasn't an adults only Disney trip. We walked to the Carnival Cruise desk and I found out.

Here we are on the bus ride from the airport to Port Canaveral, where we left from.

Checking out the "serenity" area of the ship, where no children were allowed. See those white poles? They are buzzers to call a bartender over to you. Seriously. How far apart are those two? About five feet. Heaven forbid you have to move off of your lounge chair to order a drink!

Brian surprised me with a suite with full balcony!! The room was ENORMOUS.

This is us right after we were allowed in the room. We boarded the ship at about noon, but had to wait til 1:30pm to get into our rooms. We set sail about 4:30pm.

You'll notice most of the pictures are from this angle. This is dinner the first night.

The first morning on board happened to be Brian's birthday. Here's his breakfast birthday picture.

Us at dinner the 2nd night, which was formal night. I'm wearing my emerald necklace, which Brian surprised me with by getting the chain lengthened so it didn't cut into my collar bone each time I wore it.

The water the first day in Freeport, Bahamas. Freeport ended up being a bust, because the winds were extreme and therefore no one was allowed in the water. Our snorkeling trip got canceled so we tried to go to a resort for water sports, only to find out that it was "red flag" on the water and no one was allowed in. So we headed back to the ship.

Our second port of call was at Nassau. Brian had booked the "beach day at Atlantis." Well, as you can imagine the water was ice cold, so we made this instead. Then we decided to upgrade to the "water park option" at Atlantis, so we could do this...

Yup, that's my husband shooting down a 60 foot vertical drop of a water slide, the "Leap of Faith." It was incredible. We had so much fun at the water park, riding the inner-tubes through rapids and the lazy river, going down many water slides, and enjoying the beautiful surroundings. Atlantis is a gorgeous resort, and after visiting it we've decided to consider it as a future vacation destination for us and the kids. There were so many things to do and around every corner is an aquarium. In fact, as you'll see in the videos below, on the Leap of Faith the slide actually goes through a shark tank! It's just amazing, not to mention fun and exhilarating.

Brian decided to dress up for the occasion.

This is another night before dinner- didn't realize it was out of focus. My bad.

At the farewell finale the night before we arrived back in Port Canaveral.

The sunset from our balcony the last evening.

The last night on the ship.

So we arrive at the airport on Thursday morning and as we're waiting for our flight I tell Brian, "this was all so wonderful and nice, but I think this is the longest I want to be away from Addie and Ben." When we arrived at the Philadelphia airport and back in our car, Brian tells me, "I have some news that might be traumatic to you." Immediately my mind goes through all of the possibilities. He tells me there's good news and bad news and asks which I want first. I choose bad news. "Well we're not going to see Addie and Ben until Saturday afternoon." "The good news is your birthday trip is still going!" And we were headed off to a resort in the Poconos for skiing! We hadn't been skiing since Addie was 6 months old. Really, we still had the lift tickets on our ski coats to prove it!

It was a high of 12 degrees at the resort. Soooo cold.

My only picture of skiing. It was so cold. That's Brian at the top of the mountain. I realize looking at this picture that it could be misconstrued to look like cross country skiing, but let me assure you it was not.

I am so lucky to have such a wonderful husband and best friend. We had a blast together as a couple without any children.

Addie and Ben had their own excitement. They got to split the week between Muddy and Guppy and MomMom and PopPop! Talk about a good deal for them!!

Here's one of the videos from the Atlantis. See, we think of everything! ;)

This is on our ship. It was freezing cold and windy. Brian is such a trooper!