MORE SNOW!

I took this picture on Wednesday, 2/24/10, which was two weeks after the last big blizzard. Most of the snow disappeared on Tuesday the 23rd when we got a lot of rain.

This was Wednesday, also. For the life of me, I don't understand why the snow plows plow the way they do. Is it so hard to plow along the curb of our cul-de-sac? No cars were in the road. Instead, they piled a bunch of snow right here, between our driveway and our next door neighbor's driveway. Where there is maybe a foot or two of curb space. If that. And this pile has shrunk considerably in the last two weeks. It probably extended out into the road 15 feet or so. Which means that we had to shovel that much out into the road. I'm really quite upset at the crappy plowing job they've done this winter. We pay a lot in property taxes, and I'm sorry, but I just expect the snow plows to get closer to my driveway than 15 feet. Especially when there is 2 feet of snow on the ground.

This picture was taken on Thursday, during our most recent "blizzard." The school superintendent sent out a message on Wednesday evening saying that Thursday would be a one-session day, which means the kids get out of school two hours early, because of the expected blizzard. It snowed all day Thursday and into Friday. But it seems like there's hardly any on the ground. It was very windy, but still. Where did it all go???

This was Friday morning. This is after the plow came through. Nice, isn't it? They made one straight line, backed up, plowed that line that goes from left to right, and then left. I understand that there's only a few inches out there, but come on. Last night it was all ice, chunky, slippery ice. They didn't even salt the cul-de-sac this time. I'm so annoyed. Can you tell?

So is this robin and all his robin friends. They flew back up north just a bit too soon. I think we're going to have nests under our deck again this year. They've been hanging out on this railing a lot, and the nest from last year is right under this part of the deck.

I love the snow, but I am so ready for spring.

No Dog is an Island.....

.....but Ferris seems to be stuck on one! I had him out in the backyard for a little bit today. While I spent 10 or 15 minutes picking up the pool cover clips and trying to put them back on, he spent the time sniffing for critters around the shed. Earlier this week he had been able to fairly easily walk on top of the snow to go potty. However, the last couple days were warmer and the snow was mushier. If he took his time he was okay, but as soon as he started to run he would sink. When I was done trying to fix the pool cover, he started to follow me on the snow, but gave up and just stopped walking. So I picked him up and carried him out front. I threw and he chased a couple small snowballs around the front yard. Then he went to the raised landscaping bed, which has almost no snow left on it, and just stayed there. He walked around it trying to figure out a way to get back to the concrete without getting on the snow. Eventually he just sat down and waited for me to go get him. I think Ferris, and just about everyone else in the Northeast, is ready for spring!

Hello Gorgeous

This beauty was delivered today. It is a GE Cafe Dual Fuel Range. You can use it as a convection oven or a regular oven. The drawer in the bottom is also a stove. It has an extra burner/griddle on the middle of the stove.

We decided to get a stove without the back guard/back splash because we're hoping to redo our kitchen in the very near future, and the top half of that wall (the one with the circus ten stripes) will be removed and a breakfast bar put in it's place. Whoever painted those stripes didn't remove the stove when they painted, obviously. So even if we don't redo the entire kitchen, at the very least we will be doing a tile back splash.

For Fred's first meal on the new stove, he made Pioneer Woman's Chicken Scallopine. Yum. The stove has two rapid boil burners, so boiling the water for the pasta took no time at all!

More Sledding

We tried a different sledding hill and went with our friends, Kim and Emily. The part of the hill that is to the left of the big trees has a little creek at the bottom of it, and as we were walking across the bridge, we saw a kid leaving who had just landed in the creek. So we stuck to the hill on the right which did not end in the creek.

This was Emily's first time ever sledding. I think she enjoyed it!

I went down the hill once, too, and of course had to take a picture on the way down. And I only took out one or two kids at the bottom of the hill. :)

Rachel's 11th Birthday

~*~*~*~*~*HAPPY 11TH BIRTHDAY TO MY BABY!!! ~*~*~*~*~*~

She's so happy with the box, how will she react to what's inside?!?!?!?

I think she likes her Hollister t-shirts!

My friend Kim and her daughter Emily sent Rachel this candy basket. Later in the week they took her to the mall to pick out her present. Good friends are priceless.

Rachel's birthday was on February 10th, the day of the third blizzard of the winter. Fred had to work, so he actually went and stayed in a hotel the night before. Rachel and I spent her birthday watching Pirates of the Caribbean movies and shoveling snow. This snow was heavy. We shoveled 3 or 4 times throughout the day/evening to try to keep up with it. Fred got up the next morning before work and shoveled again.
Because of the blizzard a few days before this one, Rachel's school was delayed 2 hours last Monday. Tuesday was a regular school day. Then they were off Wednesday and Thursday. Friday and Monday were scheduled days off for President's Day weekend. Personally, I think they should have used those days as make-up days. If we have any more snow days, they won't get out of school until July!

Vulture

We had a visitor to our roof yesterday. One of the neighbors called to say there was a really big bird on the roof above the garage. Rachel had been watching it, too. He kept flying back and forth from the porch roof just outside her bedroom window to the garage roof outside my bedroom window. He landed in our maple tree once, too. I think it was a turkey vulture, but I'm not sure. I was thinking maybe there was a dead rabbit or something in our yard, but I looked around and couldn't find any carcasses.

Violet was watching him the whole time, too.

We often see vultures and hawks flying overhead, but this is the first time we've seen them this up close.

More Snow

We had our second blizzard of the winter this past weekend. We got right around two feet of snow. We were so impressed when the snow plows showed up early. It was still snowing when this big plow came into the cul-de-sac. But then he plowed two straight lines, and that was it! He didn't get anywhere near our driveway. I waited patiently, and he did come back, with a friend in a backhoe. They plowed together, but they still didn't get anywhere near our curb. So, in addition to shoveling our driveway and sidewalk, we had to shovel ten feet out into the road. They also plowed the snow almost right up to our mailbox, which we then had to clear away so the mail lady would deliver our mail. I don't understand how you can pay THOUSANDS of dollars in taxes a year and get such crappy service when it snows. There were no cars in the road at all, nothing to keep them from plowing right up to the curb.

This is the path we shoveled for Ferris in the middle of the storm. Check out his little footprints leading to and from the patch of grass where he tinkled. Yeah, we had to shovel this a few more times during the course of the storm.This was after the snow stopped. Unlike last time when my van had so much snow piled on it, thanks to the wind, Fred's car didn't have much at all. This picture is a little deceiving; the snow wasn't nearly as deep further down the driveway.

Sledding on the little hill in our neighborhood. It's actually a retention basin known as "the ditch." In the summer it's used for pick-up baseball games.

Ferris went with us to the ditch.

He even went sledding with Rachel. He stayed on her lap the whole way down the hill, multiple times. He didn't try to jump off at all. I took him down once, too, and I hit a bump at the bottom and fell backwards. He still stayed on me. In fact, he made himself at home and sat down on my chest as I was laying in the snow. I guess his feet get cold in the snow. I'm thinking of getting him a pair of booties. He's so good about wearing coats, maybe he'll keep booties on. Of course, the only bad thing about sledding is climbing back up the hill. But seeing as how Ferris didn't want to really be in the snow that much, he stayed in the sled and let Rachel and a friend push/pull him back up the hill.

Back at the house after sledding we tried to make a snowman again. And just like December's snow, this snow wasn't packing. It wasn't just us....I haven't seen any snowmen in any neighbors' yards. So Rachel settled for making snow angels. I kept telling her she had to wave her legs, too, but there was too much snow and she couldn't.

All this playing in the snow makes you tired!

University of Delaware Competition

Here they come!!! On their way to a First Place finish!!
This was actually last Sunday. We pulled out of today's competition because of all the snow. (More on that in the next post)

What we didn't know at the time was that Emily hurt her knee pretty bad at tumbling the day before. She was a trooper and did everything in the routine, including her back handsprings. But my friend Kim took her to the hospital and she's now on crutches. She's waiting for an appointment at AI DuPont Hospital for Children next week. The first hospital told her it was her ACL, but the follow-up orthopedist said her patella punctured a hole in the bone behind it. Either way, she's off her knee for ten days. So for Emily, it's a good thing we pulled out of the competition today.

I'm having hardware issues....the card for my new camera won't work in my computer, and the card reader I use is broken. So I can't access those pictures until Fred gets me a new one, hopefully today.

Pyramid

Here I showed you how Rachel's team begins their routine. This is how they end it.