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Well, the snowfall ended about dinnertime last night, though the wind continued to blow. What was the final snowfall? Hard to say, as I didn’t measure last night. But when I went this morning to start shoveling things off, we had over 12 inches on the ground. That’s about the same as the snowstorm in December.

The boys still had some fun stomping through the deeper snow this morning, though it was a bit intimidating at times for Sean and Daniel. It was deep enough to definitely drop some snow down into my boots when I had to wander out into it. The boys and Kellie helped with some of the snow shoveling, though help may be a bit strong of a word for what the twins did. A video in the picture album below shows you how they helped there.

(I’m trying out a new photo album style. This one allows YouTube videos to be played within the slide show. Let me know what you think.)

The sun continues to shine today, even if the temperature is barely above freezing. The driveway, cars, and sidewalk are nicely cleared and melted, but the neighborhood roads still await a plowing. School for tomorrow has already been canceled. This is actually the first canceled school day of the year, as the last snowfall arrived after winter break started. I’m guessing Kellie and I won’t get canceled work days, however.

Yup, the kids are really feeling it, too. Even Sean and Daniel are antsy about when Santa is going to get here. They really are itching to know that Santa will be here, even if they really don’t know what to expect. All three of them cannot wait for Christmas to be here.

That’s not to say that they don’t get the religious significance of tomorrow, either. We’ve been reading lots of Christmas story related books, and they know that we are celebrating Jesus’s birthday. (Will’s understanding is a bit deeper, as it should be with an older kid.)

But in honor of their antsyness, I give you this little Sesame Street ditty. Kinda cute, if you can stand Elmo and Cheryl Crow. (And yes, Sesame Street has lots of official short videos on YouTube now. Plenty to distract kids with, if they want to sit in your lap and share some computer time with you.)

I finally got the video and pictures straight from last weekend. After a heavy snowfall on Friday night, we awoke to more snow throughout the morning. But it stopped right before lunchtime, with only scattered snow that afternoon. Sunday morning was brisk, but clear in the sky. And by the afternoon, we started to get some melt on the parts of the road/driveway/sidewalk that had been cleared off.

The pictures cover the full range of the snow. All 3 kids got out on Saturday before lunchtime, but Sean and Daniel napped later in the afternoon when Will and Kellie went out to finish the snowman. Will spent Sunday with Gwama, so our time outside later that afternoon was spent with Sean and Daniel.

As you can see from the pictures above and video below, Sean and Daniel largely confined themselves to the sidewalk. They just didn’t like walking in the deep and uneven snow underfoot. But this afternoon, we got them home before sunset and spent some time outside, and they finally started wandering around in the snow on their own. Sean, in particular, was making fresh snow tracks. And we finally got a toboggan track going that all 3 kids went down a few times. We’ll see if the snow can last until Friday, for a white Christmas.

We shall see how significant this winds up. I have lived in Richmond for 10 years, and this is being predicted as possibly the most snow that I will have seen in my time here — 8 to 12 inches. However, I just found this winter storm warning bulletin, as I was writing this entry, and it looks like they’re predicting at least 12 inches.

Should be an interesting time. In the meantime, just to give you a sense of how fast it is falling, here’s some video shot an hour after the snow started, and then three hours after it started. The snow was already as thick as it typically gets after just 3 hours. (When it snows here, we usually don’t get much to allow sledding or building snowmen, though we did back in March.) And we’ve probably got another 24+ hours of snowfall ahead of us.

11:45pm update: Heading to bed now. The winter weather advisory now reads 16 to 22 inches for the region. And I only checked 90 minutes ago for the image above. I currently have 7 inches of snow on the front stoop, and it’s been snowing slightly less than 7 hours so far. Yes, this one will be a doozy.

Yup, it certainly was the power supply. I got a new supply with an increase in the power rating (not sure how I’ll spec this in the future), swapped it out in less than a half-hour, and voila — a working computer. Power supply swaps are easy, as long as the computer maker gives enough room to get to some of the connectors.

In my case, it was made a little tough by how HP placed the main 20-pin connector on the motherboard behind the drive bay. My big hands didn’t fit in there so well, so I had to pull the panel off the other side of the box, too, to get at it from behind.

But it works now, so I shouldn’t complain. Now, if the computer would just have the energy of my twins as they chant the mantra I want this computer to keep repeating…

The bouncing came from when they were watching a 70s music retrospective on PBS in our bedroom and decided they liked the phrase and could jump to the music.

Let me apologize for the quality of the video. This was taken with my cellphone, so frame rates were a bit slow and the mic wasn’t positioned well. Also, Sean was sitting in my lap. But I got an impromptu concert from the boys this evening that I didn’t think you’d want to miss.

Enjoy.

We present — footbowl…

Kellie broke out the plastic bowling set this morning for Sean and Daniel. And they were excited about it. And proceeded to show us that we haven’t been doing it right all these years.

I don’t think we’ll take them to a real set of lanes any time soon, as kicking those balls would probably hurt just a tiny bit.

Swimming at the pool.

Or something like that. (Wiggles are sticking in my brain.)

Last Sunday, we took the boys to the pool for a bit of swimming. We remembered to take the camera with us, so we got some shots of the boys jumping in the deep end (of course, Daddy is catching, as it’s too deep for Mommy) and Will swimming back to the edge.

A couple of interesting side notes on this. For 2 or 3 pool visits before this past Sunday, Sean would not get in the pool beyond the first step in the shallow end. He just didn’t want to get wet, for whatever reason. And now, suddenly, he’s jumping in like a pro. You can see a little hesitation at times, but he has too much fun jumping in and kicking around.

Daniel, on the other hand, loves to jump in. He even was doing it earlier in the afternoon. So it was strange to get him on camera doing essentially a belly flop. And shortly after that shot, he was jumping in normally. But I guess it adds a bit of humor to the jumping. All 3 boys took turns nicely jumping in.

I don’t know why things got a bit blurrier on the second shot, but it isn’t permanently on the camera. Oh well.

OK, so I didn’t get around to recognizing my birthday on Friday. What did you expect? Still, it was nice to celebrate it with the family. It actually started at breakfast time, with a muffin and a single candle. And Sean came over to me, while I was fixing my bowl of cereal, and sang a solo version of Happy Birthday. It was very nice.

The main celebration was during dinner, with the centerpiece being a Chocolate Guinness Cake with homemade cream cheese frosting. Let me just say that I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but it worked. Wow! It’s chocolatey, and you can taste the maltiness of the Guinness, but in the end, it’s just a decadent cake. If you like cake and a dark beer, this cake is for you.

(If we had the springform pan, the base would have been a single layer, with the idea that it look like a Guinness with a foam head on it.)

Gifts from the family were nice, too. Will picked out his own gift for me, which was several Cadbury chocolate bars and chocolate pudding cups. (You’ll see those being stacked by Daniel in a photo in the video.) Kellie’s big surprise was a photo album of the first 40 years of my life, as well as some genealogical information and pictures. It’s really cool. Thank you, dear!

So, now I’m 40. Doesn’t feel any different, for those who haven’t reached this milestone yet and were a bit fearful of it.

I know postings have been a bit sparse this month. I apologize for that. This should have been up yesterday, but I forgot to follow up in posting it after generate this follow-up to his last swimming video. I have newer — and higher quality — video of Will’s latest swim lesson. You get to see him continue to improve. I love how, even when he doesn’t seem to be going very far very fast, he doesn’t give up and put his feet down but instead keeps going until he gets to the end.

I probably won’t take video next week, but will take some the following week, which will be his last lesson.