And Happy 30th Birthday Andrew Wargo!

Our plan for today was to head down to Waitsfield for a wee birthday get together for our friend Andrew's big 3-0!  Unfortunately, Mother Nature had a different plan in mind!  On Friday we had been pummeled with snow, but yesterday was quiet.  We awoke this morning to an almost white out!  We debated back and forth about whether we should try to the roads or not.  After a few phone calls we decided to try our luck.  Our friend, James, was home for the holiday from LA, and he had called for a lift.  We figured a good test would be to see if we could pick up James, so we packed our sledding clothes, flashlights and kitty litter.

Here's a shot of Ray driving us through the snow, and a few views of the roads!

  This first shot is the highway, and the second one is a fairly main street in Williston.

Unfortunately, it was not meant to be.  We had quite a bit of trouble getting to James's and we realized that the Waitsfield roads would be worse.  We called Kat and Andrew and made our apologies and sent our Birthday wishes!  Turns out that no one else but Danielle (who had left much earlier in the day) had managed to make it down.  We have follow up plans to see the Birthday Boy on Tuesday.  Since we rarely get to see James, and we had made it that far, we spent a bit of time with James.

Since we were out and about, and Essex is closer than South Burlington, we decided to head to Jami and Tonya's.  We watched the end of a Seahawks' victory and then walked to The Lincoln Inn for some burgers.

Can you believe how super big those flakes are?  I can't even guess how much snow we've had this week.  James made it up to Burlington on Friday, and he said (at 2:00 pm) that we had received 17" since his arrival!  The roads were only slightly better on the way home, but waiting had helped our cause; there were still almost no cars on the road, but the snow had slowed up a bit and the roads had seen a few more passes with the plow!  So winter has arrived in full force!  We are now as far away from summer as we will ever be, so it gets closer each and every day!  Yippie!