A Kinda Rough Winter This is Turning Out To Be

First of all, this winter hasn't been all bad. The kids have been pretty healthy with the exception of Lynnsey's cough that just won't go away. We've all been kept busy with lots of activities. Taylor and Kendall did a fun cooking merit badge for scouts so that was great to be the recipient of their practices. Kendall is participating in Destination Imagination for the third year in a row and is loving it and Lynnsey joined a team this year too and seems to be having lots of fun so far. Kendall also was invited to be a part of a pilot pottery class for kids at a studio here in town. They secured scholarships for all of the kids so it wound up costing us nothing and he is learning SO much and just having a ball. We had our annual candlelight Valentine's celebration on the 12th this year. Kalen and I had planned to have a date that night but the "poor guy" has been forced to eat out nearly every night lately since they have job candidates in town for interviews and one of his responsibilites is to take them out to eat. (Kendall said the other day: "Boy, Daddy sure is going on a lot of dates with people that aren't you!" True story. He was out with two women on Valentine's Day and I wasn't one of them.) So anyway, he just didn't really want to eat out again and we couldn't come up with anything else we wanted to do so we just stayed in and did our family candlelight dinner which proved to be a good thing because Valentine's Day wound up taking a major turn that we hadn't bargained for. (Aside from Kalen being out with two women, that is). The kids also had fun decorating our dessert for the dinner: Taylor made Monument Valley out of sprinkles. Probably no one has ever done that before.

But the rough stuff has also been causing a few problems. First of all the weather has been quite interesting. First we had what they are calling "The Blizzard of 2011". I thought that was a little melodramatic. It was a BIG storm for sure. But the people buying up everything on the store shelves in preparation was a bit much, in my opinion. We've had plenty of bigger storms before. But it got the kids a few snow days, so that was fun. For them.

And then the weather just turned completely frigidly cold. The bonechilling kind that makes you shiver for a few hours after you've been out in it. I dreaded taking the kids to school in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon. Or going shopping. Or doing any kind of errand that involved opening the door and venturing out into the cold. And then, quite suddenly it started warming up. It was so wonderful to be able to go out again. College students could be seen in shorts and flip flops. (I guess 35 degrees feels pretty warm after below zero, but I wasn't quite ready to go to those lengths yet.) The problem was that even though the days were sunny and "warm", at night the temps would drop again and freeze all the meltage (isn't that a word? It is now.) So the next day we'd have to step carefully and try not to slip and fall every few steps. And that is what happened on Valentine's Day. The day was really beautiful and most of the snow was melting away. I could almost see spring right around the corner. That night my mom was planning on bringing dinner over since it was her cooking night. She had just put the food in her car and turned to go back to the house and finish up when she stepped on the lone patch of ice left in her driveway and went down. I got a call from her after she managed to crawl her way into the house. She was very sure that she had badly broken her ankle. Of course, I didn't have the car because Kalen was out on his Valentine's Date With Two Women, so I was pretty helpless. I called a friend of ours and she went over to take her to the ER. But she couldn't get her up again and had to go home to get her two sons to come and help. They finally managed to get her up and in their van. I called several people before I managed to find someone who could go over and give her a blessing. Then I was able to meet her at the hospital awhile later after all the x-rays but before they took her in to reset her most-definitely broken ankle. Turns out it was broken in three places. We finally got her all set and the foot wrapped and we brought her here to our house where she has been ever since and will be until we can be reasonably sure that she can get up and down and around on her own. But that might be awhile yet because she's scheduled for surgery on Thursday and one doctor told her it will probably be like starting over again. She'll be off her foot completely for at least six more weeks and then she'll do physical therapy.

This is her other injury. She didn't even know she had it for a few days afterward because the ankle was hurting so much.

And then our blissful spring-ish days were suddenly over. In moved more snow and this time a bunch of ice. And a couple more days off of school. This time the storm really was bad. Not nearly as much snow, but all that ice downed trees and power lines and made the roads horrible. Kalen had to drive a candidate home from the airport one night and said he lost count of how many cars were off the road. I was happy that we didn't lose power here so we could stay warm inside and appreciate the amazing beauty of outside. Dangerous as it was, the trees were spectacular, especially today when the sun finally came out and shone through all the ice-covered branches.

But now I'm ready for warm again. And healing. And Spring.