Snow Day

Out here we usually don't get a whole bunch of snow all at once like they do out west, but this year we did. All winter the weather man has been warning us of storms that never happened, so it turned into something like "the boy who cried wolf." we stopped listening and stopped preparing. This time we regretted it. I wish we had stocked up on firewood and had more simplistic no-prep food on hand, but we just made due with what we had.
After a long cozy and quiet night we woke up to find this.

It was about 8 inches or so of snow. I thought it was beautiful and was so happy that I didn't have to try to go anywhere in it. Turns out everything closed down. Joe even got a Snow Day. We started our day the right way... we played in the snow. Yes, that is right we built 2 snowmen before 7 AM. AJ didn't like the snow one bit, but we kept him warm and tried to keep him dry to see if the snow could win him over.

AJ was calm enough when we was sitting on Joe's belly and nothing was toughing the snow, not even his boots. 

I guess he got a little cold, so we headed in to warm up. 

Our power had gone out at some point that night causing our house to get a little chilly, but luckily we are from Utah and have lots of blankets on hand.
AJ and I dried off and changed into snuggly pajamas and watched daddy through the window as we worked on knocking all the snow off of our poor breaking trees.

Joe's bike was almost completely engulfed in our magnolia tree.

So many of our branches broke off. Too much weight for these trees. 

AJ loved to watch through the window

Joe found a possible reason as to why we didn't have any power. 

After all was said and done we had about a foot of snow . It snowed all morning, but let up when noon rolled around. 

AJ figured out that he could stand on the back of the couch and  get a better view of the kids sledding down our street. I thought he would want to go out and play with them, but he was perfectly content to stay inside, dry and warm.

We started to get pretty hungry, but we didn't have many options for lunch since we were trying to keep our fridge and freezer closed. We decided on Mac and Cheese...on the grill.

Turned out pretty tasty. Only a few black specks in it. It had a nice char-broiled accent. We finished it up, roasted a few hot dogs to go with it, and sat down to enjoy a nice warm meal. As soon as we took our first bite the power came on. Power or not it was a fun adventure.
I figured since it had stopped snowing and the power was back on it wouldn't hurt to take a trip out in the car to get a few things from the law school and the store.

Someone had to get us out. I stuck in my earphones and went to work. It was very heavy and wet snow, but oddly enough,  I take after my mother and find shoveling to be very therapeutic. I know, I know. Pregnant ladies shouldn't be shoveling, but I insisted. When I was about half way done Joe brought me some hot chocolate and a chair to make sure I wasn't over doing it. What a sweetie.

When we finally got out of the house we realized we didn't get the worst of it. Only a few blocks away from our house we found this entire road blocked by fallen trees. Broken branches were everywhere. We were very lucky on our street to not have any major damage done. we also found out how lucky we were to have power back so quickly. I had friends in the area who went for a few days without it. We spent the rest of our day snuggling, watching the neighbor kids play, coloring, talking with family over facetime and just enjoying our time as a family. It was a fun snow day...now back to real life.