Well, this was an interesting week. We were busy on Saturday making sure we were prepared for the upcoming snow storm and getting a few things done while we were able to get out. Our shower head in our bathroom hasn't been working well so we decided to replace it. The faucet in our bathroom has also been dripping. Frank and I went to Lowe's and purchased a new shower head and some washers for the faucet. We also went to Crumbl cookies because Seth wanted to do that for FHE treat. We weren't sure what the roads would be like on Monday, so we decided to get the treat on Saturday. After we got home, Frank installed the new shower head and replaced the washers in our faucet (no more dripping faucet!) That evening I helped one of my former Seminary students file his income taxes (via the phone--he's the one who is in the army and he is currently stationed in Arizona). He sent out a text message to a group of the women in our ward (he calls us "mothers" 😊) a few days earlier that said "I wonder if anyone knows how to file taxes", which made me laugh. (Yes, I know a little bit about it! 😂) It turns out that he needed more moral support than actual help. Once I got him connected with a good online tax filing site, he was able to download his W-2s and the online software did most of the work for him. He actually didn't have a third W-2 yet, so he couldn't finish filing but I think he feels more confident that he knows what he's doing now. Seth worked most of the day on Saturday but he was home while I was helping with the taxes so I had him sit down and do his too so I could help him at the same time.
Later in the day on Saturday we got the word that church was cancelled for Sunday. I woke up about 5:20 am on Sunday and about 4 inches of snow had already fallen.
It continued to snow until late morning when it changed to sleet and continued to sleet until evening. We got about 8 inches of snow with sleet on top of that. The sleet packed down the snow so later in the day it actually looked like we had less snow than it did earlier in the day. Frank and Seth did quite a bit of shoveling, off and on, all day. I stayed inside--read scriptures, worked on Seminary lessons, listened to podcasts, and relaxed.
If you zoom in, you can see the snow coming down in some of these photos:
About 6 inches at 9 am:
Frank and Seth cleaning off our cars & shoveling around them:
About 8 inches of snow around 12:30 pm. It started sleeting around this time:
The rest of the week nearly everything has been cancelled because besides having 8 inches of snow with ice on top of that, the temperatures have been extremely cold. Our daytime highs have never been about the mid 20's, and the night time lows have all been in the single digits with wind chills below zero. That means that none of the snow or ice has melted, and moving large amounts of heavily ice crusted snow off of the roads has been a difficult and slow process. We've had cold weather advisories nearly every evening beginning at 7:00 pm and lasting until 11:00 am the following morning.
Snow pictures from Monday:
Snow pictures from Tuesday. You can't really tell from the photos, but the river is partially frozen:
Snow pictures from Wednesday:
(There are several squirrels and birds out there, scavenging for food):
School was cancelled every day except for today and today there was a 2 hour delayed opening, which means that Seminary was cancelled every day this week. I enjoyed the extra sleep for sure! But I have missed the kids and it's been hard to know what to plan. The school system did make a decision every afternoon about school the next day, so we never had to get up really early to find out if there was going to be school that day, which I appreciated. But I still felt like I was "on hold" most of the week, wondering if I was going to need to get up and teach a lesson the next day or not. And it was hard to feel motivated to work on Seminary lessons when I wasn't sure if / when I would teach them. One of the lessons that I prepared last week I will not teach at all. I have worked on two others a bit, and I will be teaching those next week, along with a third lesson that I haven't prepared yet (although I've read it & have been thinking about it).
I stayed busy at home all week doing the regular household chores (cooking, meal planning, laundry, cleaning...), listening to podcasts, reading a lot of Mona's Eyes, and doing a little bit of coloring. I also watched a movie one night (The Life List; it was pretty good) and exercised every day. While exercising, I've been watching a BBC miniseries version of Little Women, which is very good. I actually finished it this morning.
Frank didn't have work the entire week because the UMD campus was closed all week. It was closed the earlier part of the week while snow / ice removal happened and then later in the week the campus steam heat system went down so there was no heat. He basically got an unexpected week of paid vacation, which we can't complain about! (Although I think he got a bit bored, and by mid-week he was experiencing some cabin fever. 😂)
The FCC campus was closed Monday through Wednesday, so Seth didn't start his classes for this semester until Thursday. He only has one class on Tuesdays / Thursdays, though, so he's only been to one class so far. It's an art class. He has a math class and a history class on Mondays and Wednesdays and he also has a game design class, which is online. He did check his online class and had some reading to do, so he did that. He was not scheduled to work this week except for tomorrow. Both his YSA FHE and his Institute class were cancelled because of the weather.
We did venture out to do a few things as the week has gone on. Frank drove all the way to Waldorf on Tuesday to do some work for a client. Thankfully, the main roads were clear enough to be safe by then. I planned to go to the "Sisters Meet Up" at the church on Tuesday, but when I went outside I discovered that there was good foot of snow / ice behind my car, in spite of the shoveling Frank and Seth had been doing. I decided that by the time Seth got it shoveled, it would be too late to go. On Wednesday I had a dentist appointment (just my bi-annual check up). I decided to do grocery shopping that afternoon instead of waiting until Thursday morning when it would be a lot colder. Frank came with me. We went to the church first so I could make some copies (for the lesson that I didn't end up teaching) and Tammy and her youngest son were at the church too (I think she brought him over to play basketball for a while) so we all set up the tables for Seminary. The school system was later sending out the notice about cancelling school, so we thought there might be school the next day. By the time we got home from the store, we found out that school was cancelled again. They did send a bit of an explanation because by then a lot of the roads were fairly clear:
They sent one for Friday's 2 hour delay as well:
Last night, Frank and Seth went to see Avatar (Frank's second time seeing it; Seth's first).
This was supposed to be the first week for VITA as well, but it was cancelled on Monday and Wednesday and the day that I volunteer is Wednesday.
Today Frank and I went to the temple. I already had an appointment to do initiatories and since Frank was off work, I asked if he wanted to come too. He was glad to go since the temple was closed on Tuesday and he wasn't able to work his usual temple shift.
When we came out of the temple, I had a text from Seth telling me that his abscess has come back. When we got home, we called the surgeon and couldn't get an appointment until March, which is not very helpful! But the scheduler said she would pass on a message to the surgeon and that they would reach out if he needed to be seen sooner. In the meantime, I suggested to him that he should soak the abscess for a while and when he did that it did drain a little bit and he said it felt smaller. They called him back within an hour and scheduled an appointment for next Tuesday instead, which is much better. He is going to keep soaking the abscess a few times a day until then and hopefully it won't become a big problem before Tuesday. I really don't want another ER visit!
This week has felt very long to all of us...we all kept thinking it was later in the week than it actually was. ("It's only Tuesday? It feels like it should be Thursday...") I'm happy that we have almost made it through January. Also, next week, it is going to get all the way up to 38 degrees one day--that's going to feel like spring thaw! 😄 Stay warm and I will send another update next week.
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