Weekly Review February 13 '10

Greetings from the North Pole!!

Ok, maybe not…it just looks like the North Pole around here. As most of you have probably heard, we had another huge snowstorm this week. I haven’t heard the official total from this storm, but we got around 24” of snow. That means that from December 19^th until now, we’ve had approximately 84” of snow, 54 of those inches in the last week. Holy cow!! Even Frank (who LOVES snow) has had his fill!

We had blizzard conditions here on Wednesday afternoon / evening. I made the mistake of taking Seth outside with me Wednesday evening one time when Snickers needed to go out. (Seth had been cooped up inside all day, so I thought he’d enjoy getting out.) The snow was falling hard, but when we first went out the wind wasn’t blowing. Snickers was moving faster than Seth, so I got several feet ahead of Seth. Then all of the sudden the wind started blowing hard. It whipped all the snow right into my face; I could barely see Seth! We retreated back inside as fast as we could. Seth was crying, and I had to scoop him up and carry him back inside. We were soaking by the time we got back. I think I understand a little better now what it must have been like in those blizzards described in the Little House on the Prairie books! I’m just thankful I wasn’t one of the poor people who got stranded in their cars overnight—that would have been really miserable.

The sun came back out on Thursday; when I went outside the snow was very uneven on the ground—some places very deep, some almost no snow at all—because of the way the wind blew the snow.

Because of the snow, the boys were out of school all week. On Monday and Tuesday we were still trying to recover from the last storm. Then Tuesday afternoon the next storm blew in, lasting all through Wednesday, until around midnight. Since then, everyone has been busy trying to dig out again.

The kids were in a party mood the first couple of days this week. Tanner spent the night with his friend Ryan on Monday, and Scott had his friend Brian spend the night over here. We figured we might as well let the kids have fun now while they can—because of all the “snow days”, they are going to have a shortened spring break and a couple of extra days have been added on to the end of the year in June. We’ve used up all our snow days now, plus all of our snow “make up” days. If there are any more days that school has to be cancelled because of snow, the school district will apply for a waiver of the required 180 school days for the year so that we don’t have to add more days onto the end of the year. Hopefully we have seen the last of the significant snow, though!

Other things that got cancelled this week: my annual GYN appointment and stake conference. My doctor appointment was supposed to be Wednesday morning. The doctor’s office called Tuesday afternoon to let me know they were closing their office Wednesday so they had to reschedule my appointment. When I told Frank about that, he asked “did you tell them they need to pay you since they didn’t give you 24 hours notice?” I got a laugh out of that…it doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid!!

Stake conference was scheduled for this Sunday, and it was a broadcast from Salt Lake City. The conference was actually cancelled by the brethren in Salt Lake City, since the broadcast was supposed to go to this entire region, and the entire region got socked with huge amounts of snow. I heard they had concerns about the satellite system working, but there’s another good reason that conference was cancelled. We were already worried (even before Wednesday’s storm) about the lack of parking at our stake center. Even under the best of conditions, there is not enough parking in the parking lot for everybody who comes to conference, so a lot of people have to park on the surrounding streets. With all the piles of plowed snow everywhere, there are even fewer parking spaces in the lots and absolutely no place to park on the streets. I hope they will reschedule the conference soon, but it’s a good thing that decision was made. We are having regular church meetings tomorrow instead, except that we are meeting at 1:00 instead of 11:00 to avoid overlap with the other ward—again, because of limited parking spaces. That means I had to make several phone calls to let teachers know about the change of plans, so that we’d have prepared teachers for all the classes this Sunday!

All the snow has not been good for business, since everything shut down around here. Frank did get in a full days’ work on Tuesday and on Friday, and he did a partial day on Monday, as well as getting in a few hours from home on Wednesday and Thursday. We enjoyed having him around more, but it hasn’t been too good for the finances. This has been a rough month for that! I’m sure we’ll be ok, though. One good bit of news we got this week: Toyota is going to reimburse $500 of our repair costs for the Prius. Originally when we contacted them, they said our claim was rejected but then they called back this week to say they’d cover that much. We’re not complaining—every little bit helps.

So what do you do when you are snowed in all week? Well, I’ve found that I don’t operate very efficiently when I am stuck inside with four kids, and being cooped up makes me want to lie around eating junk food—not a good thing! (I even made cookies for family night treat on Monday—not something I do very often.) I probably could have got a lot done, but I just wasn’t feeling very motivated. We got the usual housework done and we made it to the store in between storms. (Sometimes it was hard to find what we needed, though—the stores were not very well stocked because a lot of the trucks weren’t getting through.) I finished reading The Two Towers, which I’ve been trying to get through for months—not because I wasn’t enjoying it, just because I’ve been busy and the book club book always takes priority! We had movie nights most evenings—watched Prince Caspian one night, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs another night, and Star Wars on a third night. Thursday I was a little more ambitious—I did some cleaning in our bedroom and finished working on Sharing Time for Sunday. (Incidentally, I am glad that we are having regular meetings this week because now I have one extra week to cover this month’s Sharing Time topic, which is “Jesus Christ is My Savior and Redeemer”. What an awesome topic to teach about!! Since church got cancelled last week, I was down to 2 weeks to talk about that topic, and that isn’t enough!! I feel really lucky that I get to teach this month.)

Other things we did: I had all the boys catch up on homework / reading, and I sat down with the older two boys to help them decide what classes they are taking next year since they have to turn in their registrations whenever they finally go back to school. There was supposed to be an orientation at the high school for Tanner—Wednesday, with a Thursday snow date. Guess what? It didn’t happen either night!!

I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining…I get “cabin fever” very easily so that is hard for me…but really, I have mostly been feeling very thankful that we are not one of the people who have been without power! I can’t imagine how miserable we’d be without power…incredibly cold, no way to cook hot food, and no electronic entertainment. That would be awful! We feel very fortunate that we’ve been warm and snug, with plenty to eat and plenty to do. We are also grateful for the phone calls we’ve received from many of you checking to make sure we are ok! Oh, and the Wii is a lifesaver…I got to go on “bike rides” nearly every day without leaving my living room…which is the only way I’d be able to take a bike ride right now. Of course, it’s not as good as the real thing, but it does burn some calories.

On Friday one of my counselors and I went to visit one family with Primary children. It was great to get out of the house and to see some new faces! I felt a little more ambitious that day also—I got some work done on Seth’s quiet book. (Yes, I’m still working on it! That project got derailed when I realized I didn’t have the proper weight of Pellon, and the weight I need is not sold in Maryland, apparently. Thanks to Amy for sending me the proper weight! My new goal is to get it done for Seth’s birthday.) Scott and Tanner went to spend the night with their friend Ryan that evening. Frank took Jared to see the Percy Jackson movie but it was sold out (we called first and there were tickets left, but by the time they got there, there weren’t) so they bought tickets for this morning instead. They came home and we all watched the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. (Except for Seth; I took him up to bed at 8:30 and he fell asleep before I even finished singing songs. He didn’t have a nap that day.) We thought the special effects during the cultural part of the opening ceremony were awesome! But we were sad about the Georgian luge athlete who was killed. I admit I’m a big enough baby that I cried over that! Since Vancouver is 3 hours behind us, we were up late—the torch didn’t get lit until midnight, our time. The big joke around here is that if we’d only known, they could have had the Olympics here this year—we have a lot more snow than Vancouver does!!

Frank and Jared went to see Percy Jackson this morning. Jared read all the books months ago and so he was very anxious to see the movie! (Jared paid for his own ticket, by the way. He is my most “financially minded” child. He hardly ever buys anything—he saves up instead. I think before buying the ticket he had over $40 saved up, which is really saying something since his allowance is only $1.50 per week and 30% of that goes to tithing and savings! My other two blow all their money on candy and other things like that most of the time.) Anyway, Jared loved the movie. Scott and Tanner got home in the afternoon. Tanner is sore because while he was at Ryan’s he slipped on the stairs and pulled a muscle in his chest. I’ve been busy today working on some more cleaning / organizing in my bedroom. It looks better, but I still have some work to do. Actually, it would look great except that I have three piles along the wall—things to throw away, things to give away, and things that need to go somewhere else in the house. The throw away and give away piles will be easy enough to dispose of, but the third pile is probably going to be there most of the year—since it’s going to take me that long to go through all the other rooms and find places for everything. I just try to remind myself that it’s a “work in progress” and that it will be worth it when I get to the end of the year and everything looks better.

Now it’s starting to get late. Frank is fixing a computer and I need to think about starting dinner.

We hope everyone has a very happy Valentine’s Day! We love you all!!