Snow Drifts

Thursday night it began to snow, with eight to ten inches predicted throughout Friday. So they canceled the last day of school before holiday break. The kids were kind of bummed because they missed their holiday parties, but I thought it was great. They have lame Christmas parties anyway. The school doesn't do any kind of Christmas program and the parties don't involve Christmas trees or anything resembling Christmas. The last week of school Paul brought home some circular thing with flowers on it--a welcome sign from India. I think it's great they can learn about other cultures, but a welcome sign??? Come on. Elyse brought nothing home at all--no cute craft or holiday picture. Sad. So I enjoyed sleeping in and not budging out in the freezing storm all day long. Saturday Paul had a birthday party at the children's museum. So I braved the half plowed roads and took them all. Me, Elyse and Luke hung out an played until the party was over. I told Elyse we could go shopping without Paul, but Luke took one look at the museum and ran right into the exhibits and I didn't have the heart to pull him away. We hadn't been there in four months because I've been feeling so crummy. I told Elyse we could shop after. What a mistake. I totally forgot it was the last Saturday before Christmas. The dollar store line went around the store, but the kids were amazingly patient while they bought each other a Christmas gift. The streets were literally bumper to bumper and we often waited for five rotations of the traffic lights to get through the intersection and wait in line to reach the next one. By the time we reached the book store, Luke had run out of tolerance and sunk to whinyness. He usually doesn't ask for stuff when we go shopping, but suddenly he wanted everything on the shelves and had near meltdowns when I said no. Elyse finally picked out what she wanted to get and we waited in yet another line before heading home. Wow, remind next year not to leave the house the weekend before Christmas. Today we got even more snow with 30-40 mile per hour winds and white outs as I drove slowly to the church for choir practice. Thankfully, not many people were out on the road at 9--they were much smarter than me. After church, I got stuck twice in my in-laws neighborhood, but managed to get us going again and inching along. The wind has created snow drifts over roads that have been plowed and made the unplowed roads twice as bad. It's a miracle I made it through my own subdivision to the garage. The car really shouldn't have made it since the snow was higher than the wheels. I truly believe it was a Christmas miracle--husbandless and pregnant, Heavnly Father knew there was no way I was going to get the car unstuck on my own. I did get stuck in my own driveway for a little while, but eventually gunned it into the garage. I told the kids we weren't leaving the house until spring and they would just have to be home schooled until then. Elyse looked teary and asked in a tremulous voice, "Are you serious?" "No, I answered--you can hike through the snow to the bus stop and take it to school." We could live off foodstorage, I guess, until the spring thaw. I'd probably lose weight that way... Here's wishing all of you a Merry Christmas. Ours will definitely be white. It's kind of nice to be snowed in for a while. I don't feel pressured or rushed to go anywhere or do anything except hang out with my kids and celebrate the season.