White Christmas

We've had a lot of snow---I mean a lot of snow. Usually when it snows here we get an inch or so, and the next day it is 50 degrees and it is gone. But it snowed here for 13 days in a row. We couldn't open the dental office Monday or Tuesday this week because the roads were so bad, and also there was a 6-ft drift covering the front of the building and extending out to the middle of the street.

It has been a lot of fun. The kids basically got out of school a week early, because the districts panicked on the first 3 snow days that weren't even bad. By the time the real snow arrived last Friday, it was indeed worthy of a snow day, but they got 5 days out of the deal, and lots of time to play in the snow.

Saturday night was a blizzard. A full-on midwest-style blizzard. We also had tickets to a sold-out performance of Handel's Messiah. 6 tickets. We were heavily invested in the event. Mark chained us up early Saturday when it was looking like a blizzard was on tap, and we drove the Excursion downtown for the event. There were probably 40% of the seats filled, but the show went on. It was incredible. I got chills when the soprano sings the nativity recitative and then the trumpets sound from the balcony for the "multitude of heavenly hosts." It was worth the drive through the blizzard. On the way home, there was a bit of freezing rain, and we had to stop a couple of times to un-stick the windshield. The second time we stopped, the driver-side wiper totally fell apart, and we were left with the passenger one working, and the driver one sticking out away from the car as we began a late-night quest to find a new wiper. Sadly, the gas stations had closed because of the storm, and the 2 Chevrons that we knew would have wipers were dark. The Flying J was out of all wipers, and so we headed to WalMart, where they were open, but out of the 20-inch size we needed. So I settled for a 19-inch wiper, and we were on our way back home. It was quite a night.

Sunday there was no church, again. One of our patients texted a picture of the dental office, and so Mark and the boys and Josh headed down to at least dig a pathway to the front door and get the snow off of the front of the building. We were anticipating opening Monday morning. But it snowed even more on Monday, and we got another text picture of the office even more socked in than before. So Tuesday morning Mark headed down and dug again. There was no way our patients or employees could drive to the office Tuesday, so we were shut down again. No more work until after Christmas!

We've had lots of family time and lots of snow time over the past 2 weeks. It has been very fun, and a very memorable Christmas. The downside of all of this beautiful stuff is that one of Noah's presents didn't arrive in time, although I ordered it on December 12th. I may head down to FedEx today to pick it up for him.