Let it snow let is snow let it snow

Tuesday 16th - Today we decided that we had to get our Christmas tree. My first real Christmas tree. It ended up only just fitting in the house, but thats OK, it looked good!

I was worried that Lexie would try and dismantle it as fast as we put it up but she was a really good girl and was just content with watching it most of the time with just a few exploratory expeditions.

Wednesday 17th - Well..snow was in the forecast....but..... nope not yet!

Thursday 18th - Sightseeing again today. We headed down the 495 towards Cape Cod. The first little town that we came to after the Cpae Cod Canal was fantastic. It was a little place called Sandwich, a cute little village with a Grist Mill. Would have loved to stop and look around but once again Lexie was asleep. We continued along the 6a, it was supposed to be the scenic route along Cape Cod, but we never really got any views of the water, it was just town adjoining town. They were quite cute some of these places, Barstable, Dennis. We jumped off the main road to try and see the ocean, or rather Cape Cod Bay. Once again the place was nice in the Middle of winter but I would hate to be there in summer with the rest of the crowds.

We stopped at Dennis to have morning tea and a rest stop. After driving around for a while we finally stopped a couple of pedestrians and asked for a cafe, good thing we did or we would never have found the place since it was down in the basement. Good pastries and tings but no toilets. Not toilets in the town anywhere. Such a pain.

We headed across to the other side of the island and up that coast for a ways to Orleans. We tried another detour to see the Atlantic ocean but this time we ended up at a 2 car parking lot with no beach in sight....the signs said beach but we couldn't see one!

We stopped in Orleans for Lunch, then did a bit of Shoe shopping (there are an inordinate number of shoe warehouses in Cape Cod)

before heading back down the Cape towards Hyannis. We were trying to find some big Cape Cod houses, and almost managed but it certainly was differnt to what I expected!

Friday 19th - Snow and lots of it. Hi Gang, it's Andy (Bill) here. Jen has just ducked away and with this chance I thought I would add something to the Blog. Well actually, she's in the kitchen preparing dinner so I'm taking advantage of it. Work today was a complete waste of time. I was pushing papers around. There was no-one in the office due to the impending "Apocalypse" - sorry, snow storm, that was about to hit. The forecast was that the snow would start to fall at around 1pm and people were warned to stay off the roads. We also bought some firewood from a local supplier. We got a "1/4 cord" as it is called. The delivery driver arrived at around 11am- to beat the storm he said. Now all we have to do is work out when to have the fire. Needless to say, we weren't disappointed. The white stuff began to fall just after 1pm and continued on all arvo. We waited until it was a few inches deep then went outside to muck around in it. We made "snow angels" (even Lexie, although I had to move her hands and feet around to get the angel-shape). The snow itself was really light and fluffy. Fantastic if you were planning on going skiing - ideal powder conditions. But for making snowmen and snowballs it was a dud. We did try though and made a few small ones. During that time we got Skyped by Aunty Mel, Nick and Ernie, so I had to throw a few snowballs at the window - Grandpa had set the web cam up, so what we were doing outside was visible on Skype. After about half an hour, we headed inside. And from then on we monitored the snow fall keeping track (thanks to a tape measure) of how much snow had fallen. It got to a foot before we went to bed. Awesome!!!! The BBQ on the balcony is almost buried in it and the back yard looks amazing. We also had a really nice icicle starting on the eaves near the front door so will have to watch this to see how it grows. So far we have had just over 1 foot ( = 12 inches or 30cm for those of you who are metrically inclined.) Snow is expected to continue all through Friday night, most of Saturday and then taper off on Sunday. When the Weather Bureau is forecasting another storm to follow almost immediately on the heels of this one - the second storm is expected to arrive on Sunday morning and give us another 3-6 inches of snow. (I won't do the conversion here - I think you can get it yourselves). So we'll wait to dig the cars out, although I did do the front path twice today.

Saturday 20th - Woke up this morning to a "Winter Wonderland". The snow during the night had continued to accumulate. The railing on the deck and the deck stairs looked so cool. Luckily I had moved the car to the top of the driveway before the snow hit, so there won't be much to shovel out when we get started.

Mum and I spent most of the day baking christmas goodie. Mmmm it beginiing to look a lot like Christmas!

Sunday 21st - More snow - and the shovelling begins...... we spent the morning attempting to shovel out the cars. It wasn't too hard, the worst bit was trying to get the snow off the shovel..

We spent some more time playing around, the snow is soooo deep you sink up to you knees or above with each step - well us small people do!

Monday 22nd. We had a vague plan that we were going to head to Newport today to do some more sightseeing since it was fine again, but after spending an hour or so trying to get the cars out and a trip around the block we decided that that wasn't going to be much fun and decided on another day at home. The shovelling this morning was much harder, the snow we were shovelling was more icy and much heavier. We also had to put the garbage out this morning which was not easy - trying to get the garbage bin out to the front yard through the drifts of snow. We also found abit of a problem with the house in the little sun room out the back, all the snow is leaking in. We didn't have a problem with the rain, but where the snow builds up around the room then melts, it leaks in buggery!