It's a WINTER Wonderland Out There!

Holy Moly!  It has been so beautiful watching these mounds of snow fall.   I still can't believe it snowed and snowed and snowed.  We have made some great family memories playing outside today.  The kids could hardly wait to get out there this morning when it was still coming down hard, and looking at the pictures now and realizing how fast it disappears down here, I am so glad we got out there to enjoy the snow while it was still falling!

A snowball so large, it knocked Justin over!!  Ha,ha

Our goal when we went outside was to build a snowman, but Jonathan suggested an igloo or fort and the big kids gave up on the snowman idea.  Only Ryan built a snowman and his main concern was the grapes for the eyes and mouth more than actually forming the balls for the snowman!

We are not exactly sure of how much snow we got.  Katelynn measured it around 8+ inches with her measuring stick.   Regardless of how much we got, poor Ryan had trouble walking in it without falling!

My foot is under that snow somewhere! 

The first huge snowballs together for the beginning of a fort!

Yesterday it didn't stick to the trees.  It was so gorgeous falling down and covering all the trees!

The roads were covered in snow.  Jonathan tried going off to get a decent ride in without the kids and came back rather quickly.  He could barely see from the snow coming down and kept getting stuck.  So, off the kids went to try out sledding again with a lot more snow!

Ryan was content just having mommy get an exercise by pulling him all around.

 Both Ryan and the big kids got a ton of snow piled up in the sleds from being pulled between ruts.  We had to keep emptying the sleds!  At one point, Jonathan pulled two sled with the four wheeler and Ryan and I rode in one.  Ryan opted to get on the four wheeler halfway through because we were getting so covered in snow!

Our family snow picture!!

 

 

 

 

Only in North Carolina does it snow like crazy all morning long and then by afternoon the sun is out and you actually got hot wearing a jacket if you were working hard enough.  Jonathan and Justin took advantage of the warm temperatures and shoveled the driveway! 

Ryan and I got out a pool tube and started sledding with that.  It was super fun, but Katelynn and Justin took it over rather quickly.  It got a hole in it after probably two turns of them riding it in and we had to give up!

But it lasted long enough to knock Katelynn over going super fast down the hill!

By afternoon, our fort was coming along nicely!

And by late afternoon, the kids thought they were such pros at sledding that they needed to up the adventure and become snowboarders!

 

It was a great day full of snow fun!  We lost power for about an hour or two, but we spent the time outdoors anyway so it worked out fine!  For the most part (except for about two hours in the afternoon when the whining was increasing), we haven't even gotten cabin fever!

Snowmaggedon 2014 - Play Day Number 1

We are hitting records here in North Carolina.  (Well, no one has said this is a record in history of North Carolina, but I can assure you it is a record in my time that I have lived down here!)  We had been getting warnings since Monday that a huge snow storm was going to come our way, and the anticipation of waiting for it to hit seemed to take forever.  For the first time since moving here, I actually joined all the others at the grocery store that were stocking on bread and milk (however I was just grocery shopping and getting everything I normally would), and I even joined them in purchasing some winter equipment.  We have always gotten by with what we have at home for our small snowfalls around here.  Rainboots, years-old snowpants, and the rest of our gear have done fine.   With all the predicted snow and my outdoor-loving, refuse-to-admit-they-are-cold children, I decided to get the bigger kids some snow boot.  (Really, I would have gotten Ryan some too but it was hard finding ANY boots and I never found any that weren't double his foot size.)

It finally started snowing (slowly) at noon yesterday and the kids were so excited (okay, and so was Jonathan.. he missed our last snow day in January and he was psyched about playing around with the kids and his toys in the snow).  By 2 pm, the ground was covered and we went out for our first time of fun in the snow!

 

 

Jonathan pulled out the four-wheeler and gave the kids sledding rides with it!  They thought it was a blast!!  But.. the windchill with the snow coming down was really cold and Katelynn had these crazy blotches on her cheeks so we made the kids (who refused to admit they were cold) come inside. 

 

 

 

We came inside and with the help of my smart husband, the idea came up to make face masks for the kids.  These are really more like neck warmers that I had made for four wheeling years ago, but we made them big enough to cover most of their faces.  It worked great!  We spent the rest of the daylight hours out there!

 

Katelynn had made a "snow measuring" stick at school the other week and was excited to put it to the test.  It measured at 3 inches when she first tried, 4-inches by the time we came in for the night.  We are excited to see how much higher it has hit today (Thursday).

 

 

We have our own little sledding hill in the front yard.  I think sledding is a blast too so I joined Ryan.  He didn't mind so much here, but later in the day when I tried sledding down a large hill on our road, he screamed and wanted me out of his sled! 

 

 

We took a family ride on the golf cart pulling the big kids around on the sleds (Ryan did not want to participate in this sledding event even though he could have.)  He rode shotgun with Daddy and I rode in the back to keep things safe for the big kids being pulled behind.

 

 

It was not snowing as hard, but was still tricky to keep your eyes open when you were being pulled on a sled.

.... And we lost one......

 

 

We were at the other side of the neighborhood when our dear old golf cart decided it was done for the day.  Luckily, we have the four wheeler to pull it home.  Jonathan was a trooper and walked home while the kids and I stayed with the golf cart.

 

We had one hill to climb up pulling the golf cart.  I can't believe we successfully made it!  While it was kind of crazy, I think this event may have been a hit with the family anyway!  I mean who gets to pull a golf cart through snowy roads every day in NC? 

The fun will continue today!  As I type this, it has been snowing so hard that the visibility is limited out there.  Jonathan has confirmed that while yesterday was not packing snow, today is so we are headed out to build the Miller Family Snowman of 2014 (and of course drag back out our gas-powered toys... the golf cart is back up and running.  Let's hope we can make it around without a break down today.)  We are honestly SNOWED IN though!  Jonathan says we couldn't get our vehicles out even if we wanted to.  This is crazy- but crazy fun!!!  Stay tuned... this mommy blogger is back in business and will be posting more tonight or tomorrow!  (Maybe one day I will update pictures of the last year I missed on here!)