In Like A Lion!

This will be a bit of a lengthy post because how often do we have SNOW in GEORGIA! In MARCH!
The last two days of February were rainy . . . REALLY RAINY - dumping at least 4 inches. It was fabulous. After a bit of a break (Saturday afternoon) it started raining again Sunday morning . . . then we got some hail . . .

We drove carefully to church, and the snow started. They canceled the last hour of meetings and we drove even more carefully home. I didn't worry about Robert driving (plenty of snow driving experience), it's the non-experienced snow drivers you worry about!
As soon as we got home we dug through what is left of our winter outerwear and got the kids outfitted. Natalie and Logan were the only one with complete sets. Alyssa used my boots and gloves and we improvised the rest. But SNOW and KIDS - winter outerwear doesn't matter.

When they started rolling the snow for the fort and I saw grass, I didn't think it would last to long - but the thick wet big flakes kept falling (until about 10:30pm). At first Logan didn't care to go out, but then wanted to join his siblings. He did not like putting on the snow pants, coat and boots - and had nothing to do with mittens.



He decided inside would be better . . . but still wanted to go out.
I finally put regular shoes on and his coat and put him in the garage . . . he was OK with that and actually ventured out into the snow. He later cried when he had to come in.
Sleds are something that stayed in Utah when we moved but our kind neighbor lent the kids hers - more hours of fun! (scroll to the end to watch Jake snow surf)
Our world became a beautiful winter wonderland! Unfortunately, not without damage. We could hear tree branches snapping and even a tree falling. There was popping all night long. It was actually when we heard A LOT of branches breaking off in the woods that we had the children play closer to the house.
Robert started shaking off the trees and bushes he could, but not until after our magnolias took a beating. We are hoping we can stake them up and they'll be ok (if they haven't broken).
We cleared the garage enough to pull in the van and moved the car from under threatening trees.
School was canceled for Monday and UGA was also going to be closed. Worrying that the power would go out during the night (it had been flickering on and off throughout the afternoon) we had a fire going and the kids slept in the living room - we didn't have to twist their arm for that one. We did loose power for a few hours during the night, but everything was back on by morning. The sun was out and it was a beautiful day (still is because I'm posting it this afternoon). The kids were up by 7:30 and out to play by 9am.
Here is the snowman Natalie made.
The sled was well used again, Logan even went for a couple of rides.
A bunch of neighbor friends came over to join the fun.
By now the snow was crunchy, but Robert found some good snow on the car to lob snowball's at the kid's fort.

Here is Alyssa (and Izzy) waiting for the snowballs (Izzy thinks it is a game of fetch - scroll to the bottom to watch her fetch snowballs).

Robert, with the perfect shot, got it right over the top of the wall and smack into Alyssa's stomach!
We took a walk through the woods to see what kind of damage we had and to check the river (after 4 inches of rain it was already high).
The snow had weighed down all the privet. We hope it is enough to help get rid of it but we think it will be more resilient than we want. We did get a view of what the woods will look like once we do get rid of all of it, you can even see the house from the river.
There are a lot of deep puddle areas in the woods and the river is up past the bank. In the picture is our island, which usually clears the water by at least 6 feet! It is almost over the island and the river hasn't crested yet. It looks like some of our riverbank has been washed away, but we'll have to wait for the water to go down to see for sure.
OK, my videos post at the bottoms, so I'm just putting these here so I don't have to move everything around to get them in order.
This is Jake snow surfing down the hill Sunday,

and Izzy fetching snowballs,

and Alyssa and Logan sledding.