Snow!

 Well, we survived Snowmageddon here in the Midwest.
I'll admit, this morning when we woke up to look out the window and see this:

I was originally a little overwhelmed.
But we grimly suited up in our armor to face the battle:

And we opened the garage door to see this...oh, it was so beautiful, no worries, we can handle this!

Here we are, still happy and optimistic, as we gas up the snowblower and prepare to fight

And then, I'm sorry...I don't have any pictures of fifteen minutes later, when we are sweating and shaking with exhaustion and ready to kill each other because of our frustration. Turns out our little snowblower can't quite handle 4-5 foot snow drifts and suddenly our 40 foot driveway might as well be the Nile, and eating a huge egg/toast/sausage breakfast minutes before shoveling is not seeming like such a great idea.
But alas, thank God for wonderful, kind, generous neighbors with industrial-strength snowblowers!

With everyone working together, eventually it seemed most driveways on the block were cleared. Nothing to bring the neighborhood together like the end of the world!
We passed around the coffee and homemade cookies, taking breaks to gawk at passersby, such as the lady cross-country skiing down the street, or the child sledding down Olive St. or the neighbors on the ATVs

It certainly isn't every day that the street is so buried you can hardly see the hydrants, or you can just lie face-up to the sky right in the path of traffic.

Well, in between all the picture-snapping and snow-angel-making, we did manage to get ourselves unburied (thanks to our neighbor Brian for the gas, Lee for snowblowing, and Bob for offering coffee!)

And once we recovered from all the back-breaking work

(which the cats desperately wanted to be a part of but could merely watch through the window)

We had time to walk through the lovely snowscape and enjoy the beauty.

And at the end of the day, who can complain about the cold and inconvenience as they witness the setting sun filtering behind the dangling icicles as they dissolve over the snowdrifts.