Snowpocalypse 2017: The Sled Sisters

North Carolina takes their snow seriously.  I was told by another parent on the morning of the looming storm that we should estimate one day out of school per every inch of snow.  She was clearly feeling conservative with her estimate.  Here is the reality:

1. Snow predicted to begin at 7pm, then forecast adjusts to 5pm on Friday.  School dismisses early at 11:30 Friday.

2. Rain starts before I pick Kevin up, so maybe 5:15?  Snow does eventually start, after dark. 

3.  Sleet and snow overnight.

4. Heavy wet snow on the ground Saturday morning, but thankfully large flakes fell for long enough that morning that it really felt like a snow day.  I would estimate about four inches of total accumulation.

5.  Freezing temps that had set in remained through Tuesday at noon.

6.  School resumes on Thursday at the normal time. 

It was honestly fully treacherous out until Tuesday evening, and our first outing was Wednesday, at which point cars were still abandoned on the sides of the road in our area and the driving still wasn't great on the local backroads.  They just don't have the resources to treat snow here.  Nor should they, which was abundantly obvious to me when I walked into work yesterday and thought to myself, "It feels kind of chilly, maybe I should have brought a coat?"  Today is was downright warm mid afternoon.

As previously mentioned, the snow was wet and heavy.  Not good for snow balls or snowmen, and not even really good for sledding.  Stephanie and Gwen ending up sledding in the large culvert/ditch in front of our house.  It was relatively short in length, but turned out to be long in fun.  They played in the snow every day it was on the ground, and the last day was as much fun as the first.  We were armed with hot cocoa and a fireplace, and since the snow and freezing weather is so uncommon, we really enjoyed the time that we were trapped by our NC blizzard.

The last three shots were of a legitimate crash.  They cried, I laughed.  Stephanie told me it wasn't funny.  I assured her that it was in the pictures.  She marched over to the camera, took a look at the photos and agreed.  Then she tried about 10 more times to crash on purpose.

Will it be the last snow day of the year? That is pretty likely, which is okay with me.  We are now out of built in snow days for the school district, so I am not really interested in her missing any more days-  I don't want to pay in summer weather what is fun once a year in winter weather!

SIX!

Since the middle of December, Stephanie has been six. With new Kindergarten friends on top of the neighborhood crew, a "run around Stephanie's house" kind of party was out of the question.  There are a lot of places like the Tumble Gym and bowling alley that put on a fun party and keep the kids out of your space.  Kevin and I are a big fan of our space and don't spend much time wishing we could share it with 15+ kids.  This summer, however, the kids and I saw a balloon artist/magician in action and after reviewing all of our options, we decided that he would make the party a fun and unique day. 

The weekend prior to the big party, my parents came down, to generally visit and bring the bounce house from their house for the party.  It was fun to have them here, and they are the best house guests ever.  I don't mean this as an insult to our many wonderful house guests that frequently stay with us, but until you show up driving your own house with every meal we will eat while you are here prepared with paper plates to serve on, you simply can't compete.  Nor should you, but it was really nice since we were focused heavily on beginning the readying of the house for the party, which ultimately meant moving a lot of stuff out of our large guest room and stashing it in many other rooms where it neither fit nor belonged, a job that went on until hours before the party, with Alaina helping me wrap it up.

Did Granddiddy read Olivia to Gwen?  That would be a yes. 

And now, for the part where Stephanie turns six. 

Ultimately, we didn't use the bounce house for the party for a number of reasons (the weather wasn't ideal, our only large indoor space was being used for magician set-up and the thought of managing 15 kids all wanting to jump on a 4 kid bounce house made me kind of nauseous.  Instead, we staged Stephanie outside in the natural play area that Kevin designed and built, and had all the kids meet her there.  It was a huge hit and admired by all the parents and on my list of future things to feature in a blog post. 

The kids came in 15 minutes before the show started for a mass snack chaos, but with only 15 minutes to go, we could handle the kids in the house.

Many of the kids were able to participate in the show, including, as you might expect, the Birthday Girl.  Clark, the balloon artist, made her a huge haul of balloons. 

The kids that didn't get balloons as part of the show were able to get balloon sculptures following the show (Thanks to Mom and Dad, who made one of their birthday presents to Stephanie an extra 30 minutes of balloon twisting), but I was able to get a group photo between the show and the other children getting a balloon.  His work was just fantastic!

And then Alaina stole a kids balloon, temporarily...

Some of the kids had to leave before cupcake time, and initially I was really sad that we were down a few kids.  However, I quickly realized that Stephanie didn't care, the chaos was greatly reduced, and more cupcakes leftover for me.  Here is where you should squint and admire the hand dipped pretzels made to look like magic wands on top of the cupcake!  And if you don't think they look like magic wands, I'd like to refer you to my past birthday party cake fails- the Dora cake that in no way resembled a Dora theme, the ladybug cake that was not a ladybug (but to be fair the pumpkin pie year two totally looked like a pumpkin pie, thank you Marie Callender), and you will see how totally magical wand my magic wands were.

Seriously, nicest guy ever!

And then Slash showed up!

As did Tasha and Whitney!  It is so nice to live close enough that family can come to a birthday party, though it was still a solid 4 hour drive for them.  What a special day we had, and I was glad they were here to share it.

Here is Stephanie with the final balloon haul. 

Whitney got roped into reading to the girls, of course. 

It has taken me a while to get this post done, mostly because after her party we had a week and a half of school and then slid into Christmas break and then almost immediately into snowy weather.  We are now approaching day 5 of snow days on our three inches of snow we had last week!  In the meantime, I have organized Christmas photos and taken snow photos, so they are up soon!