Tales of the Snowpocalypse

On Wednesday, we got a polite snow. It was pretty and melted off the street quickly but still managed to cancel school for the day.
On Friday, DCs second Snowbliteration of the past two months arrived. We missed Snowmageddon 2009 by eight hours, hightailing it out of town in our packed for Christmas vehicle from Olaiya's school.

This one we've taken in, inch by heaping inch. All forty-three of them.

Olaiya hasn't been to school since February 1st. Kurt hasn't been to work in five days. Government agencies have been closed since Monday and are again officially closed tomorrow, Thursday. Olaiya's school district has announced it will be closed until next week.

Kurt has shoveled snow for 2+ hours for four of the past five days. I told him it should be his new work out plan. Or equally unsustainable, go around with a ladder and a shovel and charge $300 to shovel off people's roofs. Oh, the fear is real.

Between snow storms, Olaiya and I drove out of the beltway (a scenic seven miles South on the GW Parkway) to a hardware store that had sleds in stock. They were selling like hotcakes - $16.99 per plastic tobaggen. (Kurt is sure they went around adding ones to all the prices. I was pleased they weren't $30.) See, unlike Midwestern families who of course have sleds and the like on hand, everybody here in DC is all caught off guard by the wintry conditions. It's the South, for goodness sake! Kids don't have snow pants or snow boots, nobody has sleds and snow shovels are just another thing to store in the garage you don't have. So when our neighborhood hardware store expected a truck yesterday at 2pm with sleds and shovels, the line wrapped around the block. And our neighbors, who waited in line for over an hour - twice - came home with nothing. Olaiya and I returned victorious with six sleds to outfit our 'hood crew.

The evergreen shrub that Kurt shook off late at night mid-storm to protect the cable it was resting on, only to discover it heavy-laden again in the morning.

Block shoveling out party.

Faithful shoveling neighbors = passable sidewalk

Our first day of sledding, before possessing our own sleds. Yeah, the girls were a little like, "What do you mean I can't go down as many times, by myself, as I want?" This after sledding at Grandma and Grandpa's, where there's three sleds for each of them to here on the neighborhood construction berm, where we're begging local pals to share their sleds with us. We were at eight kids to three sleds (until a tobaggen-owning three year-old decided he was tired and graciously up our ratio to 2-1; you're a stand up guy, Jacob).

Naomi basking at the bottom of the chute.

Olaiya and block buddy John ready to go down the carved luge.

Olaiya in her hole she dug with our failed sled-experiment.

Kurt at work.

Olaiya the snow-gamer. Naomi only heads out for the occasional sledding.

And again, from above the fold: Eeeeeeee, new sleds! The girls on the slope yesterday evening before the blizzard conditions came in.