Global Warming? I don't think so...

Here's a picture after a lovely little snowfall of about 3 inches, last Wednesday, February 3. Everything was so pretty. The shoveling was minimal, the temperatures were in the high 30s after the snow fell...

...and the kids were happy. They had the day off school, made a snowman in the front yard and went sledding on a hill at the school. Maggie decided to have a little snack instead of giving the snowman any extra embellishments.
Josh and Dan consulted and planned out the buttons, mouth and eyes with precision.
THEN, two days later, came SNOWMAGEDDON!!!! As usual, our school district shuts the doors to the schools at even the hint of snow coming, so they cancelled school on Friday. We only had a few harmless flakes falling from the sky until late afternoon on Friday, so the extra day off school really wasn't necessary. The kids weren't complaining, though I was! The next day, we woke up to quite a transformation. Dan was happy to have his brothers home and to be all cozy and warm inside.
This is the deck railing at the back of our house. It has trees over it and it wasn't done snowing yet, so this isn't quite representative of the amount of snow we got. But it's still a lot!
This is a view down the "sidewalk" in front of our house - toward the circle part of our court.
We thought the kids' bikes would be safe under the overhang in front of our house, but they got a pretty good dusting.
One of the bushes directly in front of our front door.
Here are the kids making their own sledding hill out of the pile the snowplow made. This is at the end of our courtyard. This was taken with my telephoto lens, so it's not too clear. The pile is bigger now, with another plowing of the road completed.

If you look at the pictures above you'll see this house in the picture where Dan and Josh are working on the snowman - quite a difference!
Since Joe was out of town for his Nat'l Guard training weekend (that Army is always taking him away when I need him!), and all my neighbors were shoveling out their driveways, I thought I'd better go and make a small effort. Yes, I'm 21 weeks pregnant, so don't give me any more flak than I've already heard! I took it nice and easy and didn't fill up my shovel too full. I knew that Aaron and Josh wouldn't make much headway and I wanted to make sure I could get out if there was an emergency. I didn't finish before dark, but my very kind neighbor, John Zimmerman, came after dark and shoveled out the 3+ feet that the plow made at the end of my driveway, plus the rest of the driveway that I didn't finish. It's so nice to have good neighbors!

Here's Maggie looking forlornly out the window at me as I'm getting ready to shovel.
Wow, what a beast! The snow came up at least halfway up the tires and was 16+ inches on the car. We got more snow than that (some reports have said 24 inches in our town!!), but the wind blew some of it off the car.
Here's our house. I don't think we'll be going on the roof to scrape off the snow, like some of my neighbors.
There's the tunnel I carved out next to the car. I don't know when I'll actually try to move the car, but hopefully all the doors aren't iced shut.
So, there's our winter wonderland. It's really not THAT crazy for someone who is from Minnesota, but I've lived in CA and VA so long, that I've gotten used to very mild winters. We're very fortunate that we still have electricity (come on - we HAVE to see the Superbowl!), because there are those in the area that don't. And a good thing for food storage too! I have plenty of food on hand and we have plenty of rooms to clean and organize if the kids get bored (okay, they'll never get that bored). Out of the last 7 days of school, the kids have gone to school 2 days. Well, 2 of those days were "teacher work days", but still!
I just found out that we could be getting possibly 5 more inches on Tues./Wed. Aaarrrgggh!