a real weather difference

As previously mentioned we were supposed to leave North Dakota on Monday, well this is a photo of Monday  night, a genuine blizzard, interstate got closed, all the way from South Dakota to Canada from Fargo to Bismarck and so on, schools closed for two days, mind you.  

 Well,  this is Tuesday mooring,  sky was just a tad blue, drifts up to five feet and officially only 11 and a half inches at the airport, so no big deal, just a lot of wind and snow.  The snow was dry and the day was cold.  Surprised you on that one huh?

Check out the snow blower.  Never thought I would get to run one of these babies.  Fun too.  Seriously you make a path, you get to see what you've done and you make a little noise too.  Throw some snow too while you are at it.

I am not sure I would fool anyone as an expert operator, but I did not chew up the bushes or the neighbors fence, so I reckon I was not a bad operator.  Check out the drifts across the street in front of the car.

If you will notice what Matt is holding, you will see why I was reluctant to give up holding the snow blower.  Matt may have some Tom Sawyer in him, but I was not born yesterday either as I had seen  those shovels in the garage earlier in the week.

 the kids enjoyed watching out the window and please note Matt pushing the shovel.  The snow blower is self propelled.  See what I mean about not being born yesterday.

After a path was cleared there was space for the kids to come out a play, prior to that, as you can see, there would be very little moving around that John Paul could do in the snow.  He did try, got snow inside his gloves, was not to happy and went back inside.

 The kids did tunnels and snow forts into the snow banks.  I walked a bit in the snow with Julianna, but it was tough going.

In the afternoon, we went to the sledding hill, it was beginning to be "broken in" with the fluffy snow getting packed down, but was still a little soft.  Here the three kids are going up the hill,  The sky was THAT BLUE.  Really beautiful.

Laura and Lydia on their way down.

And this is what it looks like from the air.   

We were sent off in style from GFK airport.  We had such a great time.  Sure did miss those kids (and Matt and Laura today)

This was the hardest thing to get used to today.  Driving around town today doing various errands, grocery, post office, REI and so on and in summer like weather.   Wearing a T-shirt, hearing lawn mowers, seeing flowering trees, having the top down on the convertible and seeing the temperature gauge read in the 80s knowing what it was like just a couple of hours away by air where I was yesterday was hard for me to process.

I hope to get around to posting a few more photos of the trip in the next day or two.  We did have some great times.