We have now experienced our first real Midwest ice storm. The freezing rain began Monday night and by Tuesday morning there was about 2 inches of ice covering the ground. We got the automated call at 4:55 am that Jordan's work was closed (why must they call so early!). The cool part of the ice is that it looks just like snow. However, when I put Chloe out first thing in the morning I noticed that there were no footprints. This was a solid sheet of ice covering the ground. I took the kids out later that day to experience it. Our backyard is slightly sloped so they enjoyed tubing down the "hill". Not hard to do on ice. We found you don't need much of a slope to go and to go fast. They went down again and again running into the fence to stop. The only problem: its not like falling on soft snow, its like falling on rock. I think we each have a least one bruise on our legs.

Chloe, who typically likes to dig and eat the snow, was freaked out by the fact that she couldn't dig through it.

Layer of ice on our fence

Chloe did enjoy chasing the kids as they tubed.

We tried going down the driveway, which worked, but ending up in the street didn't seem to safe, so we went back to the backyard.

 This wasn't the end of it. At about 3:00 pm on Tuesday the ice started again. This time it came down more like pellets and wind picked up too. This was supposed to be the worse of the two storms and everyone was preparing for major power outages. Although some in the city lost power, we never did. I admit I was slightly disappointed. With all this hype going on for days I wanted something to actually happen. Considering our whole house is electric it was probably better that we did not lose power. Again, the call at 4:55 am that Jordan's work was cancelled Wednesday. Colby was also out of school today. We added more ice on top of the existing along with an inch or so of snow that blew and drifted everywhere. The kids had such a blast yesterday playing on the ice I thought we would do it again. Bad idea! For whatever reason the ice was MUCH more slippery today. Colby tubed down our backyard and then couldn't get back up the hill. Like I said earlier, its really not that much of a hill. I went after him and then I couldn't get back up the hill. The only way I could get up was to crawl on my hands and knees. Colby still couldn't do it this way. We struggled for several minutes. Both of us falling down with each try. It ended with me picking him up to standing position after he had slipped, and then I slipped and fell pushing him back down, his face hitting the ice, his nose bleeding, and him crying hysterically. Hoping the neighbors weren't watching this I crawled up the hill to the house and screamed for Jordan to come help. I felt like an idiot when Jordan slid down to Colby, scooped him up, and then walked along the fence line so he could hold the fence to get up the hill. Why didn't I think of that??? Colby is fine, but no of us will be playing in the backyard until this ice melts!

Layer if ice sitting on top of our patio chairs after storm two.

This was the huge ice chuck that was sitting in the middle of the kids tubes after storm two. We had left them out after we played the first day.

Playing with icicles that were on the playground

And...its still not over. The kids are out of school again tomorrow (Thursday). Jordan ventured out to run some errands today and said the roads were fine, but the neighborhoods haven't been touched and the parking lots and sidewalks need a LOT of work.  I need to watch the weather becasue I think there is a  more snow on the way. If at all possible we are getting out of this house tomorrow. We have serious cabin fever!

This was taken on Friday. The kids were out of school today (Friday) again because the neighborhood roads and sidewalks were so bad. That's 4 snow days this week. It sounds excessive, but it really is impossible to walk on. I've fallen pretty much every time I have walked on our driveway. The ice is so think and rutted on the streets a normal truck and plow can't do much. This digger came by twice and then a normal plow came by at least 2 times, but there is still a good layer of ice on our street.