Countdown to Christmas & Blizzard 2009

Brynn & Alana
Blizzard 2009

Steve snowblowing

A guy walking his dogs down the unplowed street

The snow was higher than the snowblower

Our poor little snowblower got replaced during the storm

Alana

Being silly

Snow White caught her interest

Brynn loving her Snow White

Brynn

Cutie

Silly Face

Sisters

Brynn

Love this picture

Alana filling out her teachers' cards

The countdown to Christmas is on! Last week we had our first blizzard of the season and when I say blizzard, I mean a big, good old fashion blizzard! Not sure what's up with the weather people, but they have been calling weather pretty darn good the last couple weeks. Last Sunday, Mom planned on coming down so I could spend Monday finishing up Christmas shopping. Alana had a dentist appointment on Tuesday and Mom was going to stay with Brynn so I didn't need to take them both to Alana's appointment. After watching the news Sunday morning I called Mom to discuss the weather. I told her I didn't need to shop and that I can definitely take both girls to the dentist, so unless she doesn't care if she gets stranded here she better stay home. She said her week was open and that if she gets stranded, she gets stranded!

Mom arrived Sunday late afternoon and they weather people had predicted the first bit of snow was to start around 6pm that evening. Steve and I ran a few errands and sure enough during the 6:00 hour the snow began. After the girls were in bed, Steve and I decided to hit a late movie. By the time we got out of the movie the snow was really coming down. Throughout the night we got a few inches of snow (just like the weather people said, hmmmm)

Monday was a pretty decent day and after Alana's school was over I headed out to finish some shopping. I got alot done and was home by 5:30 pm, which I was pretty impressed by! The weather people predicted Tuesday was the big day for snow and Wednesday would be the wind, causing alot of trouble!

Tuesday morning when we woke up, sure enough it was snowing. It snowed and snowed and snowed. Steve was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and was originally planning on being up that way a few days, but he really didn't feel like being stranded in a hotel, so that morning he made the decision to head back this way. Our great neighbor, Bill, came over around 12:30 or so and did the first round of snowblowing for me. Around 3 or so I went out and snowblowed for the first time ever. It was fun for the first 20 seconds, okay I lied I didn't even like it that long. I kept in touch with Steve all day and of course the roads kept getting worse and worse and he just never seemed to be close enough to home...

Finally at 7:30, pm, Steve called and said he was driving behind our house! I was so happy he was finally going to be home and safe. I watched out the window, since he would be pulling up any second. A minute went by, another one, another one, etc..I call him to see what is going on and he answered "I am #*!%ing stuck! Then he continued with a few more words of choice about some idiot who stopped his pickup and got out to check out with snow which in turn made Steve come to a complete stop with the truck and trailer. He was literally stuck one block from our house! 30 minutes later he pulled into the driveway (which had been snowblown by Bill once again thank God!!!) A good samaritan stopped and tried to help Steve get unstuck, he even tried hooking a chain up to pull him, but had no luck pulling that heavy trailer. After awhile he finally became unstuck enough to be able to go backwards. The guy went out to Delaware and stopped traffic so he could go in reverse and come home the other way. I was so happy once he had made it home safe. He spent another hour or more outside snowblowing again.

Wednesday morning we were in awe of how much snow we had. Steve headed out to get a start on the snowblowing. Of course this is the day when the snowblower will not run correctly. The snow was higher than our snowblower, but he said that was not the issue. He cleaned the sparkplugs and did some other things that I don't have a clue about, and kept trying to get it to work. If any of our neighbors were watching him they were getting a great laugh. He was so violent to the poor snowblower. I saw him kick it, throw it on it's side, swear at it, etc. I couldn't help but laugh. Poor Steve was not finding it funny at all. He finally came in and before I know it he was calling Menards to see if they had any bigger snowblowers. To his defense, we have had our snowblower for 10 years and it's a pretty small one. We just put a 3rd driveway on so he can park his work truck and this added alot more area to snowblow, so investing in a bigger snowblower was probably going to happen sooner than later, but I wasn't expecting it that day! Menards was sold out, but Home Depot said they had a truck come in with 12 that morning. The next problem was getting to Home Depot. Our street had not been plowed and because of that he had to just pull his truck and trailer in going forward so he couldn't even unhook his pickup to head out. There was no way to back it out into the street with all that snow. This is when our neighbor Bill comes to the rescue again. He was one of the very few that did go to work that day and he came home for lunch. Steve called him to see if he could run him to Home Depot to get the snowblower which Bill did. Within a short time Steve was home with his bigger snowblower. He spent the afternoon clearning off the driveway and sidewalks..He did go over and do Bill's driveway and another neighbors too. Overall, I think we had around 16 inches of snow during that blizzard. It was a blizzard to remember!!!

Alana missed a total of two days of school due to the weather which was kind of sad because that was two days of practice for their Christmas program. Friday, she was happy to go back to school and it was nice to be able to get out and about again!

The pictures of the girls sitting in the chairs were taken Sunday morning. Steve headed down to Kansas City to go to a football game and the girls were just relaxing watching Snow White so just snapped a few pictures. Mom and Dad came down on Sunday to hang out with us and to spend the night as Alana's Christmas program was Monday morning.