Snow. And I mean SNOW!

I am still here.  And so is the poor abandoned blog of mine.  I thought about giving up on it.  Life is busy and time is in such short supply these days.  But the other day I saw Lynnsey and Spencer poring over our past blog books that I've printed out.  They were enjoying it so much that it made me think that I really don't want to give it up.  I rarely write in my journal anymore either and the blog had sort of taken the place of that.  If I don't do this, I won't have a record of anything that happens at all and that will be sad.  I thought about just starting over right now and not worrying about the catching up, but when I saw the kids enjoying the other books so much, I decided I would just go back and at least hit some of the highlights of 2014.  Then after that, hopefully, I will be better at keeping it current!

It's hard to post these pictures of our AWFUL winter now because the leaves are falling and the days are getting colder and colder and I cringe to think we may be in for more of this.  I think winter of 2014 was the WORST and LONGEST winter I can remember.  

When we drove home from our New Jersey trip, we hit a big snow storm in Ohio and just followed it home to Michigan.  And then it just never stopped. It snowed day after day and the temperatures were just so frigid.  It was beautiful the first few times but after awhile it became unbearable.  No one wanted to go anywhere.  Some days no one could go anywhere even if they wanted to!  Taylor and Kendall wore themselves out keeping our walks shoveled and we were so thankful for our neighbors who were so kind to use their snowblowers to keep the sidewalk and the end of our driveway clear. Church was canceled several times and that is nearly unheard of.  School was canceled way more times than the allotted snow days.  Lots of schools wound up adding days at the end of the school year so kids had to go till nearly the end of June in some places!  I'm not sure how we didn't have to but our kids were sure thankful. We are really hoping that this winter is milder, but forecasters are saying we can expect the same or worse.  Ugh!