Oh what a beautiful morning!

Sarah was the first one awake this morning. I have not let her have a pacifier at night because she is getting way too big, and she has gone down just fine without it, but every morning at about 6:00 she wakes up in the worst mood, complaining that she NEEDS A BINKY!! Fortunately, (for her mood) it had snowed about six inches through the night, and the plows were coming by just as she entered my room. Well, there isn't a little boy around who gets as excited about trucks as Sarah does. She heard it coming up the street and started jumping on my bed, shouting "The big snow truck is here!" over and over again (a quick aside, at the exact moment I typed "jumping on my bed" Ellie hopped up on my bed [where I am using the laptop] and started bouncing away).
Well, that was my cue to get up, so I climbed out of bed, showed Sarah the snowplow, and got ready for the morning.
Then, I had to get Becca up a little bit early because today was "Dad's and Donuts" at the elementary school, and Ben kindly agreed to take her. Sarah helped me wake up Becca by telling her that if she hurried, maybe she could see the "snow truck" again! (OK, the snow plow is driving in my cul-de-sac even as I type--I think I had better not write anything negative since I am apparently using a magic keyboard and everything I write occurs instantly)

As I was doing Becca's hair, Rachel woke up, so I sent Sarah in to entertain her while I finished up with Becca. Well, Rachel quieted right down, and I was able to finish Becca's hair, but when I went in to pick the baby up a couple minutes later this is what I found:

Underneath all of the blankets I discovered an entire basket-worth of baby toys. I laughed pretty hard at the amount of work Sarah done to entertain her little sister.


When Ben arrived to pick up Becca I asked him if he would be willing to help me open the garage and also see if he could get the snowblower working. Together, with MUCH effort, we were able to get the garage up, so I won't be stranded today :) but there was a loose bolt on the snowblower that couldn't be easily tightened, so I ended up shoveling the driveway by hand. The last time I tried to use the snowblower I was unsuccessful, and for some reason, knowing that Ben had trouble with the exact same things has made me feel much less incompetent and has brightened my day--even if I do have a blister from shoveling snow!


A quick note: This morning I only shoveled about half of the driveway, and I just put Rachel down for a nap and went outside to shovel the other half, and someone had already done it :) I have such great neighbors!!