Can you say "BLIZZARD!"

Well, we got socked!! It was nice having the children home for a snow day and as I woke up on Wed. I was excited thinking about how much I was NOT going to do that day. Then the opportunity to take J in to the doctor's presented itself and I figured I should take advantage of it while I could. So with J and the younger two (I left the middle three with Rita) I proceeded to go out in the storm. It was no problem until my battery light flashed on, then very quickly I could not steer. NOT GOOD! I was lucky enough to make it into the parking lot. I guess I just said lucky, but I really believe it has nothing to do with luck. I was not able to get towed due to the storm and so our pediatrician Dr. Andrew Swietlik ended up lending us his Suburban (with four wheel drive) for as long as we will need it. He actually had called a couple of times this past weekend offering us the vehicle after he heard we cannot get up our driveway many days. The driveway just gets so slick and even a little bit of snow is too much for our van to handle. Can you believe it!!! What an incredible friend he is! I keep on thinking about what would have happened if that belt (that is what it ended up being) fell off anywhere else on the road. It would have been really difficult.And so our friend Dave came and fixed it on the spot in the parking lot for us, we are so blessed by generous friends!

The next morning I wanted to get out to be at school for J's presentation of her report. Needless to say, there was so much snow I wasn't sure how I was going to get out of the driveway, much less get out the front door with the snow drift in front of it. I was upstairs thinking to myself that I would call one of the Wichgers to help me out and no more than five minutes later the children yelled out that someone was shoveling us out! It was good ol' Chuckie Wichgers!! He was such a godsend! By the time I got back from school, he had shoveled the whole top of the driveway and walkway and cleaned up some garbage that some animals had gotten into!! Now that is a true friend! When I came home and saw it all cleared up it brought me to tears! Thank you so much Chuck!

Well, as you can imagine I felt a little fried today. I was looking at my long list of things to do and then I looked at G and C and wondered to myself "what is a mother to do?" Well, build a snow fort of course!!! I really had NO time for this, but I had to have the time for this. It meant the world to G and C and it ended up being a great stress reliever for me. We had fun and the children wanted to show you in a picture. I really did not get the fort because I was enjoying G's happy look on his face too much that I focused on that!

So on to a couple of pictures, all of these can be clicked on to view them larger:

Jacinta giving her report, she made some really neat Indian figuirines out of clay that I should post up here, they were really well done.



and a couple of them outside







and one of P watching the children outside (later in the day)



Sometime I have to get B in front of the camera, that is a challenge, she has become 'camera shy' since the start of the blog! I will get her yet!