Saved by Neighbors’ Impulsive Purchase

The Blizzard of 2015 has come and gone.  I like that they have used this title because it ensures we won’t have any more blizzards this year.  After a solid three months of effort we have yet to get our gas fireplace up and running.  This was disconcerting because having a gas insert that is not hooked up is basically a guarantee that the power will fail  Luckily we had contra-karma from our neighbor who somehow managed to get a generator installed the day before a major blizzard.  He woke up at 6 a.m. and by 6:45 had located a generator.  By 8:30 he had found an electrician willing to wire it in. Perhaps this is not surprising to city folks but the expected time for completion of this project at southcoast rates is easily a month.   Importantly for is, their installation meant the power was not going to fail despite some hardy wind gusts. School was cancelled the day of the blizzard and the following day as well.   I shoveled all of tuesday morning and we took the ladies out in the blizzard in the afternoon.   The conditions were fairly challenging but the girls didn’t care.  This marked the first time they I had to make the decision for them to come in from the cold.  Wednesday we woke and had another 4 inches or so, drifted to shin height between the cars.  More shoveling was on the agenda but this time our neighbor came over and talked me out of it.  I moved the cars and he used his snowblower and cleared it out.  I took the ladies over to the sledding hill but we were foiled by plows who wouldn’t let us park at the school.  We decided to buy an additional sled and give the plows some time to finish.  When we returned, they were still working so we parked some distance from the school and hoofed it.  I had made a miscalculation and ended up taking us down a road that dead-ended against the school property and the plows had piled the snow high against the end of the road.  We traversed this hill fairly easily but Ellie was forehead deep in snow on the back side. I had to carry her and high step to the backside of the snowpile that resulted from clearing the school parking lot.  It was huge but the girls were easily convinced it was the “North Mountain” from Frozen and crawled up without complaints.  When we got to the sledding hill I had some immediate regrets.  By getting there before the crowds, the snow was not in the least tamped down and sledding was all but impossible.  The girls had no patience for track preparation so I sent them off to play while I worked on making one.  I finally came up with something that worked. It was a little short so I added a small jump and we enjoyed about 30 runs down the hill.  I would push Ellie and then immediately push Phoebe directly behind her (sorry for the terrible video).   Ellie was getting exhausted trudging up the hill in chest deep snow so after she started to labor, I called it and we headed for home back across the North mountain.  It was a solid outing and I was very pleased that they were into it the entire time despite several faceplants and lost gloves and boots.   Also, I should mention that at one point Phoebe literally ran Ellie over with the sled which prompted me as a responsible parent to put a few seconds between their start times at the top of the hill.    See storms from 2014, 2012.