Snow Days

Snow is rare where we live, so we are not always prepared for it. After school was closed for four days in a row less than two weeks ago for nothing more than a dusting of snow, we did not take the upcoming forecast very seriously.  Our kids' school even changed their policy regarding snow day cancellations determining that henceforth, they would make their own determinations regarding school closings instead of following the county system's closing schedule.  All the parents were relieved because there is no reason for a private school without any buses and with few students living in rural areas to be so conservative with cancellations.

So when the forecast called for snow and ice this past week, our kids' school opted for early release at 12:45pm instead of closing for the entire day.  That way, students would not need to make up another day. Our school announced the early release via three texts, several emails and various news media, but how fun it would have been if our school administrators had been as creative as this rival school's administrators were with their announcement.

I think our administrators regretted that decision, however, because the snow started to fall around 11:30, and by the time I got to the school, it was coming down hard.  I had the two boys I keep in the back seat and skidded once or twice just getting into the school.  Then when I added my two kids, I skidded a few more times. We were all a little scared, but I was especially concerned since I had other parents' children with me.  We sat at one light for 30 minutes, and an hour later, we finally returned home.  That round trip commute is normally less than 20 minutes.  I called the boys' mother and told her to come home from work immediately.  It took her almost five hours, and we prayed her safely home.  The traffic around here was horrible with lots of people abandoning their vehicles and walking home.

Once we were all home, snug and warm, we could enjoy the beauty of rapidly falling snow. 

Our snow covered home

It was so soft and powdery at first, but by dark it was sleeting, and I was concerned the power might go out over night.  I woke up to the power still on, but we did eventually lose it around 4pm.  Our move to a more heavily populated area put us as a higher priority for power restoration for the power company, but there are also more cars around us to slide off the road and crash into poles holding feeder lines.

After the sleet stopped and just before the snow began falling down quickly again, we took a walk along the greenway via the access point on our street.  I love the convenience of living off the greenway.

I have fond memories of playing in the woods and hiking through the shallow creek that ran behind our neighborhood as a child.  I loved the sound of ice crunching under my boots and imagining that we were charting new territory in new lands never before discovered.  My neighborhood buddies and I went on some grand imaginary adventures during our youth.  The creek and woods behind our current neighborhood remind me so much of what we had behind my childhood home except our current neighborhood has a nicely paved trail with landscaping and bridges running along the creek.

We got at least 8 inches of snow and ice which is the most I think we've had in maybe a decade.  With our neighborhood in that dirty, dreary,m construction mode, it looked prettier with white snow covering everything.  I took a photo of our house as viewed from the trail because that view will not exist in a month since they are building a house on the lot diagonally across from us.  And the house pictured at bottom right below has 15 solar panels on the front roof, but not one is visible under all that snow, so I'm guessing they didn't have back up power during the electrical power outage either.

Being cooped up inside during snow days inspires me to bake.  However, since we aren't as active inside, I always feel like I have to bake healthy alternatives.  So, I made the high protein, sugar free coconut bread/cake I have enjoyed before, and my husband and I experimented with a healthy version of peanut butter cups using all natural ingredients, organic coconut oil and no refined sugar.  They tasted about as bad as they looked.  Snow cream is a tradition around here, so that at least was yummy.

My kids built snowmen, but I forgot to take photos of them.  I did get photos of the snowmen some neighborhood kids built by moonlight at midnight.  Getting these photos required hiking through the snow along the greenway trail.

So while we were outside enjoying the snow, the bunny decided our home networking box would make a great litter box. Houdini bunny (able to break out of his cage) has already chewed through both our phone and cable cords causing both to go out until we could replace them, but the pee and poop all over the networking box are cause for eviction, no? Is it too cold to put the bunster back outside in his hutch?

Evicted