Our first snow in New Jersey

Well, technically speaking, this isn't our first snow since we moved to New Jersey.  We actually got about a foot and half the night that we moved into our new house back at the end of March.  All summer we've been enjoying the pleasant climate in the Northeast compared to the hot, humid Arkansas summers.  But, all along, we knew that the winter here would be more severe than anything we ever experienced back in Arkansas.  Everyone has told us all along not to worry as we usually don't get "serious snow" up here until December or January.  So, when we heard the news that we were suppose to get some snow on the Friday before Halloween we kind of shrugged it off as "oh, we'll probably only get a light dusting...maybe 1 or 2 inches".  To our surprise, though, the snow started on Friday and didn't stop until Saturday morning.  Overall we estimate that we got somewhere around 14-18 inches!!  Fortunately we didn't lose power at all, but thousands of people in this part of NJ weren't so lucky.  And, thankfully, we stopped in to Lowe's on Thursday to pick up some salt and a nice quality snow shovel, which Cace put to good use.  One of the things we learned through all of this is 1) to always be prepared for the worst and 2) that the weather man up here actually knows what they are talking about (something we aren't use to coming from Arkansas).

Here are some pics of the aftermath on Saturday morning...

Out little tree in the front garden was bent over pretty far as it got weighed down by the snow on the leaves that haven't completely fallen off yet.  This was the reason for the power outages across the state.

We are so lucky in our subdivision as a professional snow plow comes through on the morning following a snow storm and clears the majority of our shared driveway.  We only end up having to clear a relatively small area in front of the garage.

Jody's car was buried under about 2 feet of snow!

Once Cace got done clearing the driveway there was plenty of snow to make a massive snowman!