Now THAT'S a snowstorm!

I'd like to start off by sharing some photos of what it looks like in the DC area this weekend. Here is the view of our porch around 8 in the morning on Saturday.

Throughout the day it kept snowing, and snowing, and snowing. I didn't make fun of anyone when I started hearing "snow emergencies" or talk of a blizzard. This is the snow I remember from our days in South Bend. This isn't anything you shake a stick at and say, "What? You're closing schools? Stores? When I was living in the midwest we laughed at this!"
Here's a view of our parking lot.

And a couple of shots of our car.


And here's a shot of our front door with our boots all nicely lined up after being outside in the elements. (Sorry it's blurry. I had the camera on landscape, and apparently that's a no-no unless you're taking a picture of a mountain or something like that).)
I know what you're thinking. "Callie, we are all in Chicago or Grand Rapids, and we've all seen snow before....lots of times for that matter. It's not a big deal. We only want to look at pictures you post if the H's are in them, so get on with it!" The thing is, I like to tell a story when I put pictures up, so you'll just have to bear with me.

So it snowed on Saturday. A lot. I think 20 inches was the last I heard. And this turned out to be the perfect setting for our family Christmas. I made a chocolate chip coffee cake (something that I thought Hadley would enjoy since chocolate is her second favorite food next to blueberries), Jesse scrambled some eggs and made bacon, and we enjoyed a nice breakfast while opening presents.

Harper's looking at this trying to decide how much destruction she can create.
This toy has proved to be a hit with Harper. She presses all the buttons, and then quick as a flash turns the thing over and presses them again. The process has been repeated over and over in the last two days. By the way, isn't her hair awesome?
And really, what's a toy worth if you can't put it in your mouth?
One of the things Hadley got was a Medical Kit.
We don't call him Dr. Feyen for nothing.
After presents and breakfast, we bundled ourselves up and went outside. Hadley loved being outside. Harper, on the other hand, hated it, and that is because to go outside one has to put on lots and lots of clothes and this is just not something she's interested in doing.

Jesse and Hadley stayed outside and I took Harper in which seemed to make both the girls happy. Later in the day, we went downstairs to play with our neighbors for a bit before eating dinner.


Again, sorry the pictures are blurry. Ol' Callie had it back on landscape. This toy the girls are playing with is the Dora House (or maybe it's Hacienda?). You can only imagine how cool Hadley and Harper thought this thing was.

After the girls went to bed, we got a phone call letting us know church was canceled Sunday which wasn't a huge surprise. And this gave us a chance to go out in the snow again the next day. However, first we needed to take care of all of our stuffed animals.

All these guys were really sick so we needed our medical kit to make them feel better.

It's not looking too good for Big Bird.

And something is really wrong with the bumble bee.
Back to the snow.
"I think this is sooooo cool!"
"I'm so happy."
"I hate this."
And here's a short video of Hadley pulling Harper in the sled. Hadley wanted to pull her which I thought was sweet, however, what I find quite impressive is Hadley ability to pull Harper. I didn't know she was that strong! Well, watch for yourself: