Nemo. The snowstorm which was talked about for days and actually materialized in a big way. Ginger’s employer gave everyone the day off since it was supposed to be dangerous to travel after noon on Friday. Jess and Kendra’s schools were both closed. Ginger picked Kendra up on Thursday evening, but Jess wanted to stay in case her employer didn’t cancel her shifts (they did). Lou was home by 2, having had to go into work for the morning along with the rest of the office. The snow started to fall around 10:00AM, and by bedtime (10:00PM) had accumulated almost a foot of snow. Ginger and Kendra shoveled the walks and patios off three times in total while Lou worked on the snow blower so it would be ready for the morning cleanup. Turns out The Snow Beast had a bum belt and we didn’t have a back up. We woke up Saturday to an additional 2 feet of accumulation. It was quite impressive, and we were happy we had kept up on the first foot the day before. Ginger got started right after breakfast with shoveling the back decks while Lou worked more on the snow blower. By the time Ginger had finished the top deck, shoveled a path across the lower deck, and cleared off and around the hurricane doors, Lou discovered that the snow blower was not going to work without a new belt. Fortunately Kendra was up and had breakfast by then so the three of us started shoveling our way out to the road. Since we hadn’t pre-shoveled the drive the day before, and strong winds had picked up over night and continued throughout the day, we were moving anywhere from 1.5′ to 4′ of snow over a distance of 300′ and 8′ wide. This did not include the turn out space for backing the cars out of the garage. We worked for a total of four hours on Saturday, and by the time we were finished we were so happy that the hot tub was cleared first. Our bodies sank down into that warm goodness and temporarily melted our muscle pain away. On Sunday Lou made a trip to the parts’ store to pick up new belts and spent the better part of the day getting them onto the machine. Turns out its no simple task. You have to separate the blower part from the engine part in order to attach the belts, and getting the two pieces back together took all three of us. While he worked on that, Ginger finished shoveling the lower back deck and back garage patio before taking a short snowshoeing/picture taking adventure around the property with Kendra. When the adventure was finished Ginger started cleaning up the snow that had blown back over the driveway the night before thinking she’d do it just until the snow blower started working and Lou could finish the job. Oh the joy experienced by all when that motor started and The Beast began doing its intended job … for about half an hour. Yes. The belt broke again. Day two of snow shoveling lasted 3.5 hours. If we never see another shovel for the rest of the winter we will be very happy. Meanwhile, Lou took pictures of The Beast and will be writing an informative letter to the maker of said inferior product. Stay tuned! Kendra went back to school Sunday night, but both her and Jess’s schools cancelled classes for Monday because the roads were still so bad in their areas. Lou returned to work (and left for DC), but Ginger decided to take a sick day to recover from the shoveling and catch up on all the household chores that didn’t get done.