Things That Start With "S"

Namely the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Snow!
Since Saturday was relatively nice weather wise, we decided to go to the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade downtown. I’m not much for parades in a reality as you stand around and watch people walk by. This is equivalent to watching any sports car race like NASCAR….what’s the point?

But I figured it would be something nice to do and different and I can at least cross that off my list of things Makenna did as a child, like going to the circus and Zoo. Downtown was quite crowded to say the least and I found it hard to leave…not because it was physically impossible, which was part of the problem, but also because I was looking for a cousin who I knew was in the parade. I never did see her but I didn’t want to leave because I enjoyed listening to the bagpipers.

There were various groups that played them and I’m not sure why but to hear them play and play in tune I rather liked it. Maybe it’s from our days in Scotland (a mere 3 days,) but even Chris was saying how he’d like to learn how to play the bagpipes. I think listening to one may not be the same, especially if it’s from a person just learning how to play (I would liken it to torture,) but to listen to a group of them was quite entertaining.

Here’s some more pictures from the parade:

She’s too cute with words in her pigtails in this picture. She doesn’t let me do pigtails or pony tails too often so I have to take advantage when the mood strikes her

 Feeding daddy some of her cookies

Having a little parade of her own

Then the Snow! I have to admit I was completely unprepared for this “blizzard of 2011.” On Sunday morning I took the minivan to church, telling Chris it was fine because there wasn’t supposed to be any snow (that I knew of)…to my shock and horror, on the way to church, I heard the forecast. Then after church I was even more shocked to see that it had started.
When I took the dogs out after 10pm on Sunday night, they just peed at the bottom of the steps (what we could find of the steps) and I told Chris at that time that we were in for trouble.

This is what we woke up to on Monday morning…an imprint of our door made of snow..almost up to the door handle.

Needless to say, the dogs did not want to go out whatsoever and against all my sensibilities, I had to allow them to go in the house.  The cat on the other hand, HAD to go out (we don’t have a litter box,) and she was not too happy

As we finally cleared a path, we did get the dogs out, but put on their little jackets

Then the snow removal process really began.  You can see by this next picture that the snow was as high as our landscaped wall which borders our steps

In this next one you can again see the landscaped wall in the background and how the snow is against it, but also look how high the snow comes up on the plow…just about to the top!

This is the door to our garage

Makenna took this crooked picture of me on our deck to show how it comes up to MY knees!

Then Makenna got bundled up and this is her standing in front of a snow mound – up to her tummy!

And the process to remove the snow from the back deck – in layers

 It took Chris all day practically to remove the snow from our driveway and then rake it off our roof onto the just shoveled back deck (that I had shoveled) to then remove that snow. The plows didn’t even plow our roads until sometime after 10:30a.m. and Chris told me we had snowmobilers going up and down the road.


While Shoveling the back deck I was making a list of “Things not right about Snow” in my head. Such as,

- It’s not right if you have to shovel it in layers.

- It’s not right if you have to shovel it to another spot just to move it closer to its end destination as you just have to shovel that spot again and it now has more snow.

- It’s not right that as you shovel, the wind is blowing it back onto the spot you just removed it from and into your face.

- It’s not right for the weather to be nice and sunny and balmy later in the day after you’ve removed all the snow and exhausted yourself, just to have it melt.

- It’s not right to not be “packable” snow so that you can’t really make a snowman or snow fort or snowballs.

- It’s not right for the forecast to tell you that later in the week there’s a certain percentage that you will be getting more.

I could go on but those are the ones that really stuck in my head. Just know that there are other “S” words that crossed my mind that go with Snow!  Like this "SUCKS" and "Sarasota, FL."