SuperStorm

Last week we had a blizzard. A big blizzard. Like the third biggest storm in Chicago's history. 

There were twenty foot waves coming in from Lake Michigan (a few blocks away), 75 mph winds, a couple feet of snow. School was canceled here for the first time in twelve years. Lots of people downtown lost power and heat. Entire cars were buried in crazy snow drifts. The chief of police for the university emailed everyone saying it wasn't safe to travel even on foot, so everyone was to find a place indoors and stay there.

Sounds pretty bad, right? Well here was my cozy little view of the storm:

That's right, I didn't leave our building for four days straight. It was glorious. We did a lot of relaxing and got to spend plenty of time with each other and our good neighbor friends.

There were pajama days...

...and shirtless days.

It was a bit challenging to find ways to keep this little guy entertained.

We painted stuff...

watched plenty of TV...

built an awesome fort...

set up board games and scattered the pieces (Josh's new favorite thing)...

played the piano...

fought dragons...

sang songs...built a puzzle...

and I relished the opportunity to finish some sewing projects.

A quilt for the new baby

Hair clips for my six-year-old friend's birthday

On Tuesday during the blizzard, Matt was up late into the night doing homework. After I finally went to bed around 12:30, I heard him sneak out the apartment door and return about 15 minutes later. This is where he went:

He and his friend Lincoln decided to be REAL men and punch the blizzard in the face. Once Matt went out in his bare feet and basketball clothes, Lincoln had to one-up him.

Since I wasn't brave enough to go out exploring during or soon after the blizzard, the rest of these pictures came from friends or the news. I take no credit, but wanted to show you how crazy this place has been.

Here is the view out the front door of our building.

This is an intersection in our neighborhood. No one could drive anywhere for a couple days until they got the streets cleaned up. And I was surprised they were even able to do it! In the city, where do you put all the snow?? There were a bunch of tractors shoveling snow up into big dump trucks so they could haul it away one load at a time. There was just no place to put it all!

Somebody in our neighborhood has a funny sense of humor. They built this snowman after most of the storm had passed. Matt said the red stuff was jelly.

About a thousand cars were stranded on Lakeshore Drive (below) for up to twelve hours until the people just abandoned their vehicles and were shuttled to safety in emergency buses. A lot of people suffered from frost bite, while some experienced heart attacks and were found lifeless in their cars after the storm. One man's body was fished out of Lake Michigan after the huge waves had pulled him in.

This is a truck that was abandoned and left open during the blizzard.

Here is our parking lot. We were lucky enough to be parked in a good spot where we only had to scrape a few inches of snow from our car because the wind had blown it off. Others were buried pretty badly, depending on where the snow drifts piled up.

The sidewalk outside our building.

It was crazy. I had no idea snow could do so much damage! Or take so long to clean up enough to make travel possible.

After the storm finished dumping on Chicago, Nature thought it would be funny to tease us with a perfectly sunny day. 

So we went sledding with friends!

It was a really frigid day, but the kids never seem to notice.

The kid crew:  Nico, Avery, Eva, Ruby, Aiden, Josh, and Jacob

Cabin fever got a little serious for Matt. Can't you tell from his expression here? Something about "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"...

The next day we ventured out in the car. Another perfectly sunny day. It was kind of cool to drive between walls of snow.

We got majorly stuck getting home from the grocery store in our neighborhood. Probably because half of the streets still looked like this.

Those couple days of sunshine melted the snow on our building just enough to produce the biggest icicles I've ever seen! Here is the view of the fire escape out our apartment window. 

I just want to break a couple off for a good old fashioned sword fight! 

It was a pretty fun week. And again, just to be funny, Nature decided to dump a few more inches of snow on us over the weekend. Enough that I had to scrape my whole car twice in two hours while I was out and about. Doesn't it make you want to come visit??