The Big Snow

Only one week back at school after the holidays, and we're hit with the "big snow". That's right, 5 inches of snow layered with ice. Now those of you from up north, are probably thinking "what's the big deal?" The big deal is 8......as in only 8 salt/sand trucks for the whole Atlanta area. (Chicago has 274). Now obviously, Atlanta doesn't need hundreds of salt trucks, but when the city is covered with ice, there's nothing it can do but shut down. The storm came in on Sunday night. On Wednesday, Ruben tried to go to work. He made it out of the neighborhood, which is huge as it's very hilly, but the main road outside our neighborhood was closed because of ice in the direction he needed to go. He turned the other way to see what he could do, but after seeing cars on both sides of him trying to climb a hill and sliding all over the place, he turned around and came home. A short while later, they closed the road in that direction too.

He was able to make it to work on Thursday........very carefully. I finally ventured out on Friday, but even I managed to get stuck in ice on the way back into our neighborhood. At least I knew what to do, and didn't just spin my tires and dig myself in deeper while burning up my engine, which is not uncommon to see here in the south!

With all that ice, school was cancelled for the entire week! The kids, of course, LOVED the snow! It's the first time we've had enough to take them sledding. Monday was a beautiful day, sunny and not too cold. Just like the first warm day of spring when you live up north, everyone in our neighborhood was out. The older kids and adults were sledding down the steep streets, while the younger kids, like ours, stuck to the smaller hills. Our neighbor across the street has a steep driveway, and the kids went sledding down the driveway, across the street, and jumped the curb into our yard. They had a blast!! Lily usually went down on my lap, but by the end of the second day, she was sledding by herself! Alex was going up and down the hill as fast as he could trying to get in as many turns as possible, while Michael spent a lot of time rolling around in the snow, and eating it!

Helping Daddy work at home

The first time the kids have been sledding

Yum!