Blizzard, day 1

6:30 am
The kids woke up early in the morning, and were delighted to hear the news that school had been cancelled!  We all eagerly ran to the windows to take a look outside and the mounds of snow.

Pretty disappointing when you can still see the grass and patio in the back yard.

But, "the worst was yet to come", so we waited.  We waited for the 18"+ of snow, for the 50mph winds, and the possibility of power outages.

We stayed in our pajamas all day, watched movies, read books, did puzzles, made some crafts, and exhausted all of our snow day activities by 2pm.  Which, ironically, was when it finally began snowing in Central Illinois.

By 5 pm it was coming down pretty hard, and the winds were howling.

We continued our pajama marathon, made some soup, and just sat back and watched the snow (with a little Weather Channel mixed in, for good measure).

At about 7pm, Mark decided that he'd better get out there and try to clear the driveway because if we waited until morning, the drifts might be too high.

By bedtime, we were beginning to get excited about our blizzard.  The heaviest snows were predicted to fall overnight, so we couldn't wait to wake up and get outside to play!

10:30pm
One final check outside.

On a side-note, I loved the way the strong winds were causing the snow to "ripple" ... our backyard looked like a winter version of a beach.