"Buses will be delayed," I remember the recorded message from the school telling me. I can't remember quite clearly: I had a newborn baby at the time.
I kept watching out the windows for Madeline and Kensington to arrive home.
First one hour, then two hours, then almost three, when at 5:30 p.m., these two little snowmen arrived off the bus:
We all knew it was supposed to snow that school day. The schools, the businesses . . . everyone knew it was coming, but no one seemed too worried when the first flakes began to fall after lunch time, and the kids had not been sent home early.
In Georgia, the coming of snow means the entire city shuts down.
We couldn't be more excited!
But then Dallas, who works less than five minutes from our house, was running about an hour late.
His little truck slid all over the roads, so he went back to the office to load up the truck bed to make it heavier, so that he could get more traction. It sure helped, but the accident he got into on the way home slowed him down as well! Avoiding running off a small embankment, he swerved to run himself into a semi-truck. It dinged up the side of his door and broke off the mirror.
But he made it home!
We were still waiting for Raleigh and got a phone call at 8:30 p.m. saying that she was on the bus at the neighborhood at the bottom of the hill, but the bus driver couldn't go any further. So Dallas trekked down the snowy hill to bring her safely back home.
She couldn't have been more talkative and excited about her thrilling time being stuck at school for hours and then again stuck on a long bus ride home.
Other friends of ours were not so lucky. Some kids didn't get home til almost midnight. Some friends had to abandon their cars on the freeway to walk home instead of freeze in their cars all night.
And we were confined to our homes the rest of the weekend.
The first day looked like this:
We are just not prepared for cold here, so Emery wore her warmest coat with a vest over it, hand-me-down gloves we found, and Dallas jimmy-rigged a little hat out of fleece for her. She lasted outside in the wet, cold snow for about a half an hour.
Not bad.
This little sweet potato dressed up in a giraffe-bundle circa 2003 when Madeline was her age. She barely fit into it, but loved it so much!
After I-don't-know-how-many-days, we began to feel a little stir crazy. No one liked the snow for very long, the Olympics were becoming boring to watch (we couldn't find anything but hockey on the channels), and the novelty had definitely worn off.
Dallas attempted to make a pair of moccasins:
It didn't work.
Kensington entertained herself with a baby-blanket-cape, long socks, and an empty vanilla bottle.
I love that smell.
She also mastered the art of rocking Natalie to sleep.
She became such a pro that we assigned her that job every evening thereafter.
Little precious.
Check out Raleigh's sock-less ankles. Brrrr! The girls are here with our neighbor-friend. We like to call her, "Priscilly."
I don't think I ever stepped out the front door.
I don't like the cold.
Kind of like Emery. She joined me at the window to watch the fun.
Can you find the snowman in this picture?
Cooking and baking make the days go by a little faster.
But it sure was nice to slow down and snuggle too.
. . . And then a couple weeks later, it happened AGAIN!!
