Happy Lunar New Year!

Checking out the ang pow...

With Ethan...

after the shoveling...

CMU and many other schools in Pittsburgh canceled classes today due to bad weather and traffic condition. We went to get some groceries as another round of snow storm might be coming on Tuesday and Wednesday. (CMU is canceling classes again on Tuesday...)

What we saw on our trip out today:

Classes were canceled, but no kids at the playground:

sledging

We also met up with some friends and went sledging for the first time...

With Felix and Madeleine...

Going back up the slope for another round... the walk up was pretty tiring...

Just the two kiddos.... doing it blind-folded...

so we had to shovel

We didn't manage to go to church, as the car was stuck in the parking lot. We didn't do anything about it the day before, as I thought "somebody" would clear the snow for us, and anyway we didn't have the equipment to get the car out. Apparently, I'm supposed to be that "somebody". Charis kindly offered me her cool-looking orange shovel from her personal tool box to get the job done. That shovel served her well when she was at the beach. After some serious consideration (like for 3 seconds), I decided that it's a better idea to borrow a more professional shovel from the maintenance guy.



So we shoveled. Charis had a fun time helping and playing. Picking up the shovel, memories of Exercise Nutcracker that I had gone thru during NS flashed in my mind. After shoveling for 1.5 hours, I called it a day... the car was still stuck, but less stuck than it was 2 hours ago. Anyway the evening service got canceled, and we decided not to bring Charis to her Sunday choir practice.

a milestone...

the day after...

The snow came pouring. Pouring non-stop overnight, and most of Pittsburgh woke up to many inches of snow. Thankfully, we don't have to shovel snow, and there were not disruption to the power/electricity.

Charis had a nice time outside playing with the snow. We actually wanted to make a trip to the Walmart, but we couldn't find our car...

We did manage to find our friends' car...

The view from our windows...

The snow almost reached the windows of those apartments at the basement.

From the oven...

... to the freezer fridge. Yes, that's what it feels like for us. We were actually expecting colder weather, but God is merciful to us. The temperature on the night we reached Pittsburgh was around 2° C. It was like negative-something the week before. Perhaps we did check in some Singapore warmth...

The journey to the west took us 30 hours. All the 3 flights that we were on were uneventful. The kids did well on the plane. They managed to sleep some, and when they were awake, they didn't fuss much. So much so that when we were alighting the planes, the passengers around us often commented how nice and good they were, etc. We are glad that there was no missed connections, no missing luggage, no issues with the immigration, and no troubles with the custom.

Returning to a quiet apartment needed some getting used to, especially since we were surrounded by friends and family almost every day and night for the last few weeks. The cold and gloomy skies in Pittsburgh, in contrast to the warm and sunny skies in Singapore, add to the blues.

The major task for us now is to get over the jet lag. We have been having breakfast at 4am for the last 2 days. Josiah seems stoned when he is awake. We missed our lunch today, because we overslept our nap. We were supposed to wake up at 1pm, but we slept till 4pm. We also need to get started with unpacking our luggage, which I'm sure would evoke some emotions and memories. After these, we would work on the holiday photos, especially the post-Christmas ones....