A VERY snowy surprise

Randall out shoveling for hours!
A wet scene I'm sure to see a lot of this winter.

Our back steps are now just sheets of ice. My Dad and Ethan enjoyed taking a hammer to all that ice!
Poor Ethan was out helping Randall for an hour or so and when he came in he had these strange patches of weird skin...I don't know if it was frostbite, or windburn. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen. The skin was kind of tough and hard, and swollen feeling.
Now we know why they put those "poles" around the fire hydrants...
Enough snow?


A house across the street. With the wind the snow drifted to almost cover all their steps and half their windows.
Our front porch. There was about 3 feet of drifted snow. We just kept saying "unbelievable" over and over. Even living in Michigan 3 years this was crazy.
In the morning this is how we found our van.

In the evening of the storm.
Below: The snow was covering half our window, this was after we had actually hit the screen trying to uncover the window.

As of Christmas day we hadn't received more than a fluttering of snowflakes on one occasion. We thought a white Christmas would be nice but we weren't so lucky. The next day however, was a whole other story. We woke up to a forecast of snow, but by the time we went to church at 10am no snow. by the time we left church it had started to snow and we had probably an inch on the ground and everyone was very excited. It was only after it continued to snow and blow like crazy for hour after hour that we started to think this was a serious storm. That night my parents tried to get back to their hotel, but after several attempts, we realized they were snowed. They had to spend the night on some air mattresses in our living room. Whoops. I told them they were the lucky ones that got to sleep around the Christmas tree.

In the end we received 30 inches in 12 hrs! Now is that a lot of snow, but with all the blowing the drifts in some places were almost 5 feet high. The biggest bummer of all of this snow was that we had forked out some sweet cash to join my parents to see the "Rockettes Christmas Spectacular" on Monday. The transit authorities advised everyone to stay in and truthfully there was no way we could even get out to get a sitter and get into the city. We were really sad but it was out of our control. Randall and our Landlord and his wife shoveled for 3 hrs just to get the cars out and a path out the drive and from the front door. It was kind of fun but it is proving to make the already narrow roads in many places now one lane. Just one more charming thing we about New Jersey. You gotta love it or you just may cry yourself to sleep at night!