Look what she made....and we got to eat! :)

This is one of the benefits to having a daughter in Culinary school. You get to eat her classwork. :) She made tarts. Aren't they adorable? And they taste DELICIOUS!!! I know, several of you have offered to test her work. You have to come and visit to get some. Today she is making croissants! I LOVE croissants. Ah, the buttery, flakiness.

Now for the complaining part of this post. We are going to get fat with all these yummy desserts because the snow is still here! I'm so sick of it. There are no sidewalks. You take your life into your own hands if you want to run on the roads, since the plows just pushed the snow onto the shoulders of the roads. oy. I think Travis and I are running on treadmills tomorrow. boring, but necessary. We have a race next month and we haven't gotten any running in BECAUSE OF THE STUPID SNOW.

Ok, I'm done now. I saw some little flower heads poking up in the yard today, the birds are singing every morning when I go outside. I do have some things to be thankful for. We leave for Orlando in a week and 2 days for Sara's dance competition. That is going to be fun!!! :) Ok, that's about it for now. :) I hope you all are having a wonderful week. I love you all!!!! :)

Recovery

We are finally in the recovery mode ~ I hope! We had a little dusting of snow last night, but right now the sun is out and it's a bit warm. We have HUGE chunks of ice on all the roads, so it's still slow going to most places. School was on a 2-hour delay this morning and some schools in the area are still closed because they can't get to sidewalks or bus stops. Even at our school, there is very limited parking, they sent out an email telling students to take the bus or get a ride so they wouldn't have to deal with all those cars trying to find parking.

I know some people laugh, and it IS kinda funny, but when I say the snow has crippled the area, I'm not kidding. People don't have snowblowers here, the city/counties have to hire anybody with a plow on their truck to help plow roads, so you get some dude out there with a 4x4 and a plow (and don't forget the cell phone!) just pushing snow wherever. They don't know what they're even doing! Oy. The Federal Government was closed all last week except Friday, and even then, Travis worked from home. There are HUGE piles of snow EVERYWHERE. No sidewalks can be found and there are TONS of trees uprooted or broken. BUT, the storm that was supposed to come in at the end of the week, isn't looking like it's coming here. YAY!

I'm not TOTALLY complaining, but I am looking forward to all this snow melting and being done with it. I know, CINDY WANTS SNOW TO GO AWAY???REALLY??? Yep, I want the Virginia snow to go away. It's not as fun as Wisconsin snow. I'm attaching a couple of pictures of a couple of days after the last big storm that dumped 2 feet on us. The first one is looking down our street ~our house is on the right. The second picture is the road leaving our neighborhood. I can't wait for spring! :) You can see where the mailboxes are and the street lights. Yeah, that's where the curbs are....there was a 1.5 car-width lane going through the neighborhood. Not fun.

Good Golly!

SNOW, SNOW AND MORE SNOW! Holy smokes. It started yesterday. We shoveled last night about 6 inches so it wouldn't be as horrible today. It was wet, heavy snow so it took us a while to clear out the driveway, sidewalk and pipestem (the little road we live on). While we shoveled, it kept snowing, so by the time we were wet, freezing and ready to come in, there was already another couple of inches on the ground.
They predicted that most of the snow would fall during the night and they were right! We woke up to another 12ish inches. It's hard to tell exactly how much since the wind blew last night too. We shoveled for about an hour and a half and got the driveway and most of the pipestem done. I was so wet that I came in for a while to dry and thaw. :) About an hour later we went back out to finish the job we had started and to clear some of the snow that was still falling. 2 hours later we were tired, cold and wet again. Time to be done. We put the shovels away (it was still snowing a little bit) and came in and thawed out. When I looked outside this evening, we probably got another 3 or 4 inches. On the weather station website it says we got 23.5 inches. I don't think we got that much snow in one storm while we lived in WI. It is TOTALLY CRAZY! And to top things off, they're predicting more snow on Tuesday. I'm not sure if the girls will ever get to school again. The snow is so piled up and the roads are so messy, school and activities are being cancelled left and right. I have sewing to do, and we have power, so there's tv and computer to keep us busy. We have plenty of food to last so we don't have to go out to the store and if the power goes out, we have the trailer with a full propane tank for heat and TONS of blankets and quilts. :) But I really hope the power doesn't go out. That would be a bummer.
Anyway, I wanted to post a couple of pictures of the snow so you can all see what fun we're having! :) tee hee Mostly, I wanted to let you all know, we're still alive and doing fine. :)

snow

They are forecasting a HUGE storm blowing in tomorrow. They are predicting that we will get 18-22 inches. People are FREAKING OUT. This picture was from my phone, so it's not that great, but you can see the bread aisle at the market. I went to get bread and a couple of other things to make our snowed in weekend happy (Oreos and milk). The parking lot was so full that I had to drive around a couple of times (this is a BIG parking lot). I lucked out and got a front spot and ran in. I got to the bread aisle and laughed. The beer section was surprisingly full. It would have been the opposite in Wisconsin. School has been cancelled for tomorrow and the weekend activities are also canceled (there were basketball games scheduled).



We got about 5 inches last weekend. Travis is upset that these storms keep blowing in on the weekends. I saw on the news that they have already measured approximately 24" at Reagan Airport. That is more than the last 3 winters combined. If we get what they're predicting we will go over what the area has gotten in the last 5 winters combined. We brought it with us. That's the only logical explanation. :) This is the view from our upstairs window. Isn't it so pretty??!!

I'll keep you posted this weekend!