During the Blizzard

This is what it looked like through our front window during the blizzard the continued on Wednesday morning:

And out the back door:

Out of my bedroom window:

And out the side door:

Inside, we opened gifts from my Aunt Babz - she sent a gift for Charlie's birthday and included something for Eli too, which was very thoughtful. I was glad to have something new for the kids to play with while we were cooped up inside for a couple days.

Eli named his puppy, Boots because she has white paws.

 And Charlie loved his Big Boy bank - 

Babz also sent this awesome frog bag (for me), but Charlie took quite a liking to it :)

A few days later when we finally emerged from the house, I bargained with Charlie that he could bring the frog bag along in the car if he wore his real coat (because after the blizzard, we had subzero temps and I wasn't okay with Charlie just wearing his hoodie outside). 

View of our alley after the snow finally stopped - we got about 20+ inches of snow, but the wind blew these huge snow drifts up against the garages in the alley. Ben did manage to get in to work that day, but this is what he had to climb through for five or so blocks, then he waited outside in the blizzard at the el platform for 25 minutes before a train showed up. At the end of the day, he walked all the way to the Metra station, only to find that those trains were running the Sunday schedule (since there was hardly anyone downtown that day) and there wasn't a train anytime soon. Then he trekked over to the nearest el station, but the normal express train wasn't running... oh he was so frustrated. It took him almost two hours to finally get home on Wednesday.