It’s February and when you don’t have anywhere to go, snow is comforting. It’s BEAUTIFUL. Blankets the neighborhood in QUIET and white. It tells everyone and everything to STOP. As a result, I’ve never minded it. The kids look out the window constantly. I remember when Luke was old enough to shovel, he’d hope for snow. Now he’s old enough to shovel for neighbors and he loves it, but sometimes it is sooo heavy! I couldn’t wait for the kids to wake up to see how much snow there was.

Luke was up and out first, ready to shovel and couldn’t believe how high it was to dig to the walkway. He helped Mark all morning and most of the afternoon on our driveway and walks, then the neighbor’s, then his regular shoveling job. It would have been child abuse to send him over by himself. Mark helped him and I pitched in a little-I’m sort of a wimp when it comes to shoveling, I ache!

What I loved most about the day was how the neighbors were all out enjoying the novelty of it. We don’t see each other much in the winter. Everyone was helping each other and it was fun to walk around and see how beautiful everything looked. In my brother’s neighborhood, a woman went into labor the evening that it started and the ambulance wouldn’t come so the whole neighborhood pitched in to shovel them out.

It was exciting even though we lost power for almost 2 days. That was starting to get worrisome (no heat, no news, although we had water, the county was under a mandatory conservation order due to power interruption at the treatment facility). We have piles and piles of snow to play and contend with in the streets. I have to admit, going through this after the catastrophe in Haiti really made it difficult to complain. At least we had a safe and warm place to wait things out, food to eat and mostly everything else we needed.