Ice Ice, Baby

No, we have not installed privacy glass in our dining room.  This is our ice coated window from this morning’s icy rain.  Brrrrr.

Last Tuesday, Sam came home from school informing us that his chorus/show choir holiday concert had been canceled for that evening due to icy conditions moving into the area.  The concert was moved to Wednesday night instead.

The next morning, we received an automated phone call at 6:15 am from the school superintendent informing us that school was cancelled that day due to the icy roads.  What kid doesn’t love a snow day?  Well, it turns out that my kids don’t — at least not when it means that they’ll be missing out on fun stuff at school during the winding down days before Christmas break.  But we made it through the day, a great violin recital that evening (the choir concert was again moved to the following evening), and then I ended up staying up until 11:30 that night getting the last of the teacher gifts wrapped so the kids could take them to school on Thursday.  After all, another ice storm was forecast for Thursday afternoon through Friday morning and there was talk that school might be cancelled again on Friday.

Thursday morning, 6:15, another phone call from the superintendent.  No school.  Once again, the kids were upset.  In talking to a few people later that day, there was some frustration that school had been canceled at all because the roads were not bad.  However, the roads were quite icy when my younger kids would have been catching the bus so I’m glad they didn’t take any chances and that my kids, however frustrated they were at missing class parties, were safe.  We went out later that evening for a meeting (no choir concert…again), and the neighborhood we were in was a total mess and it was difficult for Jeff to maneuver the van.   When you think “Snow Day” you picture piles of snow.  This was not the case.  We had maybe 1/4″ of snow.  But on top of that was about 1/2″ of ice.  My kids were sledding in our yard and we don’t have any hills.  By giving themselves a little push at the start of the very gradual slope from the side yard to the back, I was surprised with how far they were able to go.

Friday morning was a repeat of Wednesday and Thursday.  We had an ice storm Thursday evening, and although it warmed up through the night melting much of the ice, the roads were still too slick during those early morning bus riding hours.  If they could have called a one or two hour delay start to the school day they would have been fine, but it was another snow day and we got a very early – however unwelcome – start to our Christmas break.     We’ll be attending a “holiday” choir concert in January.

If that weren’t enough, temperatures plummeted Sunday evening and we woke up to 1º on Monday morning.  Wind chill took it to at least -17º.  The pipes to the kitchen sink were frozen which made me very happy that Jeff is on Christmas break, too!

Not at all deterred by the weather, Sadie informed us this morning (as she has a few times in the past couple of weeks) that she wanted to get out the waterslide and go swimming.  We tried to convince her that it was way too cold but she would have none of it so I finally gave in.  “Okay, go get your swimming suit on and go out to the garage to find the waterslide and I’ll meet you out there.” (You can scroll up to remember what our dining room window looked like about this time.)

Sadie headed straight for the bedroom and donned her suit.

She was headed for the back door when she announced, “It’s too cold.  I shouldn’t go.” Then she ran into the bedroom and got dressed.  Whew!  At least it was her idea.