Snow, cold weather, and MLK

As most of the northeast, we have been experiencing some pretty cold temperatures and several days of snow recently. Today was the coldest it's been by far (it was 11 degrees with a -6 degree windchill when I woke up) but luckily it was a day that I didn't have to be outside, so I was comfortably warm inside and just had to listen to the wind gust against the building. We did have our coldest outdoor service project to date last Friday after it had snowed the night before. It was about 25 degrees for most of the day and we were in Brewster clearing invasives from a piece of town conservation land, which is a pretty standard task for us on our group service days. The day started out feeling like it was going to be brutal and that everyone would be miserable, but I wore tons of layers so once I got moving around I was a comfortable temperature the whole day. Also, it was a day that people from all 3 houses (Wellfleet, Bourne and the Fire Crew) got to work together, which doesn't happen often, so it was fun to get to spend time with each other. Overall it was a great day, and it was really cool to see the freshly fallen snow all around us while we were working. I took some pictures of it to share, although pictures never do nature justice.

This is what happens when all 3 houses get together...lots of chainsaws!

We also had another encounter with snow this week when it snowed Monday night into Tuesday morning and we got temporarily snowed in. It didn't snow enough for anything to get cancelled, but we had to wait for our driveway to get plowed before we could go anywhere so we had about an hour delay while we waited for that. It made me realize that I'm really back in New England, not in Maryland anymore, because people here actually know what to do with snow and the chances of getting a snow day are a lot lower haha. And as always at our house, if there's downtime there's going to be some shenanigans going on, so I took a picture of what happened when Jared tried to take a nap on the couch:

Collin loves tickling people and this morning was no exception. I just love how at peace Jared looks at the bottom of the pile. 

Our service project this Monday was a special project for MLK Day that a group of my roommates planned (each COD Day has a specific volunteer recruitment project they are assigned to plan and this was Thursday COD Day's event). The main focus of the day was "Serving those who serve us" and doing things to help people who serve in the military. The event "hub" was where everyone checked in and there were stations to make care packages for soldiers and families of soldiers who are deployed. Then there were other sites for different projects. The site I was at was helping a veterans center redo their basement which was flooded during Sandy, so I spent the day putting in insulation in preparation for a group of volunteers to put up drywall. It was a good day, everything went very smoothly which was great and really showed that the group of members who planned it had done a really good job. It was fun to work with other volunteers and do something different from what we normally.

Now for some bonus photos of some other goofing around that happened recently when we were working on fixing shellfishing cages during COD Day on Tuesday:

Suzanne decided to get into a shellfish cage

Steph wearing one of the cages

Well that's it for now. Everyone try to stay warm in this crazy weather!