Category Archives winter

I have not blogged all year!

Man, I am having withdrawal symptoms and have lots of things to blog, but I am just too tired tonight. We have been away for the last four days visiting JL’s parents. The boys had a great time seeing Bubbe and Grandpa.

While we were away we missed two lovely snow storms here – and had to try to deal with them long distance. Nothing like getting 12 inches of snow at home (from storm one mind you) and trying to find someone to make your house look lived in. Thank goodness our neighbor and JL’s boss helped us out. Plus my parents watched things – thanks mom and Dad :)

On that note I am going to take the photos off my camera and go sleep in MY bed! Tomorrow is going to be filled with laundry, organizing, snow removing, picking up my monkey from school, and caring for a little guy who has two teeth that FINALLY cut today!

Happy New Year everyone!!! 

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Icy nightmare & thank you J & H

The following picture was going to be my Wordless Wednesday. Unfortunately, a stomach bug that has been passed through everyone in our house finally hit me yesterday afternoon/evening. Here is the photo: 

Ice nightmare Tuesday evening

This is the side of our house. As you can see it is a HUGE mess thanks to recent storms. Since we bought our house we have had trouble with ice damns forming and at least two times backing up into the house. I now hear water dripping and am paranoid. The mess pictured above was a new spot that we had never had problems with in the past. The cause – leaving the AC unit in the window.Why did we leave said AC unit in? Well,  because we have had a really hard time year in and year out getting that sucker back in to cool the room. We never figured it would be an issue.

The issues that caused the horror shown stem from something that occurred when we bought the house. One of JL’s coworkers removed a tile in our ceiling because it was bulging. Much to our dismay we had a leak in that section of the rubber roofing. That part of the roof had to be replaced. $1000 later it was done just in time for the new carpet to be installed. So for over three years we have left the hole in the ceiling with NO insulation. Can you see where this is going?

Yes, the lack of insulation, along with the heat escaping from the AC unit in the window gave the ice the perfect opportunity to have this occur. The AC unit itself allowed a wonderful spot for the obscene amount of ice to collect.

Tuesday evening JL went up to try to chip away at the ice and put some stuff up there to melt it. That did little or nothing. Here is all he was able to remove next to his hand as a size reference:

"Small" icicle

 Fast forward to me pitching a FIT to dear hubby about this and fearing that the AC unit was going to fall and put a hole in our roof and land in a room below. I blew a gasket (I admit it). Luckily JL talked with our friend J. J had some ideas on what to do and said he would come over. So J and his wife (who I have grown up with) H came over last night. By the time they got here I was not feeling so well. I was in denial and thought I was feeling better. Thank goodness H came – she watched the boys while I tried to keep stomach contents in.

JL and J went upstairs so they could see what was going on. They brought up something to hack at the ice from the tiny crack in the window. Here are two views from the window upstairs: 

A view from the AC window 

HUGE icicles

The guys came downstairs and told us they were going up the ladder to see what else they could do. JL called soon after (via cell phone) to tell me there was good news and bad news. The good news – the ice was gone! The bad news – the AC cover came with it.  JL and J came back in and were going to head to Home Depot for insulation and a tarp to put the AC on in the attic. I asked if they could use our old shower curtain instead. I really did not want them going since I was feeling worse again. They said they would. So they went upstairs and removed the AC, took away more ice and then came down.

At this point I was GREEN — I will spare you the details.

The end result is the following was removed from the house (here with some fresh snow on it) and the house as it is now: 

The removed ice boulders 

Post ice boulder and AC removal.

So now you can see why I "love" this house so much (long story goes with that) and why I want to move to Florida.

A big thank you to J & H for being so wonderful and helping us with this. I seriously was going insane from worry about this ice formation on the outside of the house.  Also sorry that you were exposed to whatever I had – the good news is 24 hours later I feel human again!

Oh and even our rose bush wants the spring to come . . . *sigh* 

Poor little rose bush

 

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Snow, sleet, sledding, secret ingredient cookies & sleepy babies

Storm #2 of the not even officially winter season is heading out (I think). As of this morning we had 5-6 inches of snow and the ice kept on coming all day. Our plan was to stay home, watch movies, dig out, and bake cookies. Some of those were accomplished. We are partially out from under the snow and ice, we never had a chance to watch a movie (thanks to a certain little monkey), and we ate cookies that were delicious.

By mid-morning JL finally decided that it was time to head out into the snowy cold "fun" and took NHL with him to get out some energy. The poor kid was experiencing some serious cabin fever from being in the house since early Thursday afternoon. Here is Darth Daddy with his camera of course! 

The Abominable Cameraman

Now please note the dorky Abominable Cameraman taking a photo here while measuring the snow fall: 

My big geek taking a photo of a snow measurement

Finally it was time for NHL and JL to dig out at least the front area of the house: 

Time to shovel us out

After some time they finally made it further down the sidewalk to clean up more of the snow. Look at the little guy following his daddy – AWWWWW! 

Monkey see . . . monkey do!

Digging, digging. . . . and yes more digging! 

Dig, dig, dig. . .

I went back inside to check on the little guy who was keeping warm. As you can see he was having a blast playing, but you can also see his poor little nose was very sore looking. He now cries when he sees a tissue coming toward him.

JSL stays warm inside

A little while later JL came in to get me for some photos. The boys had decided to take a break from cleaning up snow to play in it. Here is a mosaic of their sledding fun. 

NHL goes sledding with Daddy

The smiles one both of their faces were just SO big! 

All smiles on the sled

Soon after this the boys came inside to get warm and eat lunch. We had lunch that NHL picked out – tomato soup with alphabet noodles in it. Mommy thought he might get a kick out of them and bought them. After this we noticed that NHL was getting tired. We knew he would not go to his bed. Instead we got him to snuggle up on the couch under a blanket. After fighting the nap we finally noticed that he was quiet and calm. Here is how I found the little guy. It still amazes me how kids can fall asleep in the most odd ways. 

Snowy play = one tired 4 year old

Meanwhile another little boy in the family was miserable. He refused to eat solid food, wanted to be held and could not sleep. He would settle, get into his crib and wake up crying within 20 minutes or so thanks to his poor nose. Here is how he greeted me after one of the mini-naps. The shine on his nose is vasoline to help the sore areas from constantly wiping all of the dripping. 

No naps for me today - *sigh*

While NHL was napping JL was ambitious and made some chocolate chip cookies using the recipe from Deceptively Delicious. The secret ingredient in these cookies are whole chickpeas. NHL woke up just in time for the first batch to come out of the oven. JL made one recipe which yielded 40 cookies (Seinfeld’s recipe says it will make 2 dozen – what size cookies does she make?).  As you can see NHL approved and wanted more than the two that he was allowed. They truly were YUMMY and you never would know there was something like chickpeas inside. 

Deceptively Delicious cookies on a snowy day

Now both of the boys are in bed and the house is quiet. The 7 month old was a struggle since he was beyond overtired, congested (did the milk thing to help), and two teeth are really coming in. He also learned a lesson – you do NOT bite mommy when nursing and laugh. If you do that mommy will pass you to Daddy and say "No BOOB for you!" 

Night-night for now since the morning will be here soon to finish digging out. 

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Storm 1 over . . . storm 2 in progress

The storm from Thursday has come and gone and dumped about 10 inches of snow here. My poor aching back still has not recovered. Why? Well, Thursday night JL was up sick hugging our toilet (they certainly were not friends – that’s for sure). This meant that I was the lucky winner of taking care of all 3 boys and digging us out.  Tons of fun since we were not able to get the snow blower from my aunt and uncle fixed and here in time (note to self – get that DONE quickly).

Here are some pictures from the last storm Thursday night as it was at the worst. These were taken when JL was coming home. His commute home is normally a 30 minute drive in BAD traffic. Well, it took much longer than that. He finally arrived home about an hour and forty minutes after he put his car into drive. Even my poor mother had her fun. She typically goes 5-10 minutes to get home. It took her over 40 minutes to get out of the parking garage at work and an hour and a half total just to go partially across the city. There were NO plows out and it was miserable to say the least.

This is a photo of JL coming down out street at about 6:30 Thursday evening. Not the best photo, but it gives you the idea of how "lovely" the conditions were. 

JL coming home after an hour and a half trip here

As you can see from this next photo it was coming down quickly and had gotten a lot deeper since I went out to shovel earlier. 

The snow did not want to STOP!

And now a car going down the street on that "fun" evening: 

Cars having trouble going down the street

 Friday everyone stayed home. I did not want to dig out and take NHL to school and he was really tired. So we stayed home and I dug us all the way out.

Yesterday we went to get things for the house (FOOD) before the next storm hit over night and today. JL was feeling better so everyone went out. This is how it looked yesterday at about 10:30 (about the time I was freaking out over the ice damns forming again): 

A view two days after the storm stopped

Last but not least my boys ready to brave the cold temperatures. The poor little guy didn’t know what to do. He was just happy that we were going to get him some "cushy" tissues for his poor bleeding nose. 

Can you tell it's COLD out?

So here I sit moo-ing the little guy who is refusing solids today while the other boys are digging us out of 5-6 inches of snow while the sleet and freezing rain continues to fall. More photos to come later. I am off to see the sledding NHL and price out a move to Florida so I can be warm near Mickey Mouse!!!

 

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Winter 2007-2008 unofficially begins

Is it OVER yet?

How sad is it that I am saying this after only one ice storm and our first real snow event of the season?  GAH!

This morning the snow began to fly just before 11:00. JSL was in his crib sleeping peacefully (thank you MOOricle) so I went out to my car to clean it off and move it up. The white nasty stuff was coming down quicker than I was able to get it off my van. *sigh*   As I was out there flipping out about getting NHL at 1:00 my father called. He was going to suggest to pick him up NOW since he had heard the roads were already bad. This was just 30 minutes into the storm and about 1 inch on the road.

So I cleaned my car off, scooped up JSL and went to pick NHL. His teacher was really nice and brought him to meet me at the door so I did not have to take the sick monkey out of he car. Poor NHL did not have his boots and wiped out on the way into the house. This stuff is powdery and slick. We are home warm and safe and just have to wait for JL to get in later on. He has a nice size trek to get here. With any luck he will be out a little early to avoid the major mess.

They are saying that we may receive 4-8 inches this storm.

This one?  

Yes, you read that right. We are getting an even larger storm coming Saturday night and all day Sunday. ICK! I am ready to pack it up and move to Florida to be closer to Disney World NOW!

Here is a photo of the white stuff as of 1:30 this afternoon. 

The winter season really begins

And now here is one of the Chanukah decorations in the window: 

Chanukah decorations

Updated storm photos to follow later. Now I just hope we can stop the ice damns from forming on our roof and flooding the inside of the house. 

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