Snowed In

Our subdivision is at the top of a hill, and, in the middle of the neighborhood, our house is at one of the highest places within the subdivision. As I am not a runner, and our ranch-style house is not a big lightening magnet, the only time I take notice of of this is when St. Louis gets its periodic big floods: whew, glad we don't have to worry about that!

That is, until it took Paul nearly 2 hours to get home from work today after leaving his office shortly before noon. His commute is usually no more than 20 minutes, and today he spent the last hour of his white-knuckled drive within a mile of our house, trying to find a way up the hill. Aha! A snowplow, finally! (The snow was deeper than the Passatt, which did make driving difficult.) Alas. Cars stuck on the hill, forcing him to turn around again.

Eventually, he did make it to our subdivision, to our street, but from the bottom. He walked a couple hundred feet to change his clothes, don some gloves, and pick up a shovel. Whereupon he shoveled his way two houses up the street, then up our driveway. (His office never did officially close for the day.)

The girls and I stayed snug and warm inside all day until after nap time, when we all trooped outside to experience the deep, heavy snow with sled, angels, and a large snowman as the snow was beginning to taper off.

When the sleet first turned to snow this morning, I pulled down the crock pot and started browning stew meat, so we had a warm cozy dinner - along with Paul's homemade biscuits - after playing outside this afternoon.

Also, I managed to keep my personal goal of not losing my temper with the girls at all today, despite staying up late last night and running around the bed in a sleepy panic to answer the 5:45 am phone call alerting us that school was canceled. Tonight, I'm keeping the handset on my side of the bed, just in case.

For cuteness sake, here's a picture of the girls in their matching outfits after church on Sunday. I mention that they're matching because it's not immediately obvious given Ada's much darker shirt. Witness the bottle of water that they're sharing, and Ada's habit of purposefully spilling water all over herself while drinking, and saying, "Mess! Mess!" and there you have it.