Thanksgiving and Blizzard 2010

If you read the last few posts then you know we had some pretty crazy weather around here that resulted in us being snowed in. We finally dug ourselves out, but we decided it wasn't worth taking a chance on the roads so we stayed here for Thanksgiving. (And from what I hear we made the right decision--half of the drive, for those who made it, was straight ice). A family from the ward did invite us over to join them, but we didn't want to impose on their family and celebrating with just our little family sounded nice. We did appreciate the invite though.

Halfway through cooking a whole Thanksgiving feast for our little family I started wondering what the point was. It was a lot of food and a lot of work for just two adults and a little munchkin to eat. I started wondering if there were any widows we could invite or other friends, but I couldn't think of any. It was Thanksgiving though and we couldn't not celebrate, so I finished cooking everything.

Neither of us like turkey very much, so I broiled a few tenderloins. Honestly, I don't mind if I have steak instead of turkey every Thanksgiving from here on out :) Aside from the steak, we had the traditional Thanksgiving fix-ins that we enjoy--mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, rolls, cinnamon rolls, orange rolls, raspberry Jell-o, and pumpkin pie. Everything turned out nice and yummy. In a way it was nice to celebrate with just our little family, though we did miss the rest of our extended family.

Now for the storm story...Let me first just say that I'm really thankful I wasn't still nine months pregnant and expecting to go into labor any day. I would have had to have a home birth I'm pretty sure.

We found it both humorous and interesting how many people made remarks about our house today at church. Most people called it an igloo. Our house definitely received the brunt of the storm as far as our town is concerned. The open field behind our house offers no protection from the wind, which never stopped blowing for five days. And, might I add, that it was blowing at least 20 miles per hour for all five days. It seems like most of the snow blew into our yard to stay. In fact, our drifts are so impressive that we've had neighbors take pictures of them.

Here's my photojournalism of the storm:

The truck that's nearly camouflage took some major maneuvering to get out of the driveway.
Duke and Duchess were glad to see the light of day once the storm was over. We locked them in the shed so they had better shelter from the wind.
The view out our front door.
We can go sledding out our front door now :)

I spy a Jonathan. He's standing behind one of the drifts.

The snow leading up to our front window a few days after the storm. At one point the drift made it all the way up to the roof line.

We might have to buy Maggie a sled for Christmas so someone can enjoy all this white misery snow :)

When I bundled Maggie up she reminded me of the little boy on A Christmas Story--she held her arms straight out for a long time as if her coat inhibited her arms from bending.

Yeah...that's the hole dug out of the snow to get to our shed door.

Lane's latest stats are 12 pounds six ounces, 58th percentile and 25th percentile for height. Poor guy has to be bathed with pink wash cloths, but that's all we have and they do the job just as well as a blue one, I promise. He's getting more and more handsome every day. He seems to have a red tint to his hair, so I'm curious to see what color it ends up being.