Welcome Octizard

So I'm stealing the phrase Thane used the other day to describe our blizzard in October. Yes, we survived our first blizzard of the year. It was awesome. We had 2 days of non-stop snow and some mighty gusty winds at times too. I'm not sure what the final count is, but I would estimate it to be well over 2 feet, maybe closer to 3 feet. We have so much snow on our roof and frontyard it's unbelievable. Our backyard got hit pretty hard too but because of the winds, the snow mainly accumulated at the back of the yard right in front of the trees. For those of you that saw the video of Shawn jumping into the snow pile, that was taken in our backyard. Yes, Shawn is one crazy puppy. He was so excited to jump in the pile. He's still a kid at heart I tell ya.

In case you were wondering, yes, I did help with shoveling the driveway. I actually enjoyed doing it. It's a good workout really. Plus, Shawn had to work from home, so I thought I could help him out by doing some of the shoveling too. We tried to get Inara to come out and play with us, but she wasn't having any of it. I think the fact that the snow was so high that she got a little scared. I mean it would have come up well past her waist at times, so I understand where she's coming from. While Shawn and I shoveled, Inara sat on the steps in the garage and watched us instead. Hey, at least we got her outside, and she stayed out there for awhile why we worked. I think we just need to take small steps with her before she gets used to playing in it.

This morning I decided to take a short drive to the grocery store with Inara to get out of the house for a bit and to give Shawn a lil quiet time so he could work in peace. I was cracking up driving around and looking at ALL the snow everywhere. I mean really it's a ton of snow! I love seeing the ginormous piles on corners left from the snowplows. It makes me smile to see such mounds of snow. Then when we got to the grocery store parking lot, I was shocked by the number of cars that were completely buried under snow. What happened to these people that they decided to abandon their cars for the last 3 days? Just seems so weird to me. Then I love to see parking spots taken over by mounds of snow that they have plowed. This all seems so foreign to me because I've never lived anywhere where it snows like this, so it's just such a novelty still. As we got out of the car, Inara and I stopped to watch the maintenance people hit the awnings from underneath to make the snow come down. Guess I never would have thought about that. When we were driving back home, I decided to drive around our neighborhood a bit and drove by the school to see if families were sledding on the killer hill located just behind the school. There were already about 6 groups of kids sledding. I was so jealous because I really wanted to go sledding too. As we were driving around, we were greeted by many people outside shoveling their sidewalks and driveways. I was shocked to see some people shoveling with actual garden shovels rather than snow shovels. Hmm...seems like that would make things harder, but to each his own. All-in-all it was a fun little 60 min drive around our little area to see what the damage was from the storm.

Late this afternoon, Thane invited us over to go sledding, so as soon as Inara woke up from her nap, we packed up and headed over to the other Tomlinson house. Fingers were crossed that Inara would be more receptive to checking out the snow this time. Also, I was anxious to finally go sledding. The 7 of us headed across the street of Thane and Kristi's house to this private but perfect hill for sledding. Inara didn't want to try it, so I had her stand on some sort of sewage pipe cover that was free of snow. She pretty much stood there the whole time. Shawn sled down the hill as Thane took Avery for a run. Finally, I braved it and went down myself. I LOVED IT! It was so much fun I couldn't wait to do it again. We all took turns going down the hill. Kristi stayed at the top of the hill with Jack and Inara. Shawn and I kept asking Inara if she wanted to go down too, but she adamantly said NO! At one point, I stopped at the top of the hill to re-tie my shoe. Thank goodness I had Inara in the corner of my eye, because the girl leaned forward to see what I was doing and was going head first into the snow when I reached over and caught her. Of course, she got scared and started crying. I tried consoling her, but she wanted daddy. He held her for a bit and got her to stop crying. At this point, we asked her if she wanted to go down the hill with daddy and she wimpered no. We decided it wouldn't kill her to go down with Shawn, so he got situated on the sled and went down with her. She didn't cry sledding down. She started whining once they were at the bottom, but I think that's because she had already been crying and not because of the sledding. I was so proud of her for at least going with Shawn and not throwing a fit. I'm also so proud of the fact that she was outside in the snow for as long as she was. Way to go baby girl. At this point, she wanted to go back inside Kristi's house. A HUGE thank you to Auntie Kristi for offering to take Inara inside with her and Jack so that I could stay out and sled a bit more. (I owe you one sis.) Avery went inside too, so it was me and the boys still left. Thane started working on shaping the slope and adding a bump so we could catch some air as we went down hill. Boy was that insane! They then just kept adding a bit more snow to the bump to get more air. That they did indeed. We got some great videos of Shawn and Thane eating crap. We'll get those posted on our photo gallery soon for everyone's enjoyment. It was the best ending to 3 cold days of wintery weather in October.

Oh and I can't forget the entertainment center built-in. During the whole snow storm, we also had our contractor Mark and painters here finishing up on the built-in. Thank goodness it's complete. Shawn posted before and after pictures at www.shawnandmarisa.com for everyone to check out our first big home improvement project. We're so excited it's done. I know this was something Shawn wanted to upgrade since before we moved in, so hooray to Shawn for getting his dream TV center completed. Now if we can ever save up for that basement completion, we'd be golden.