More Crazy Weather

Thursday (Dec. 18) was another cancelled school day as another big storm was supposed to hit. Well, it never really did. It didn't thaw out, but we had no new snow, either. We tried to do school, but it was difficult with all the Narnia excitement. And Friday was more of the same, except that things got a little warmer and the roads turned slushy and drivable. Knowing that another big storm was coming in, I rounded up the kids and we did a speed-shopping trip! We drove up to Jon & Bopha's and quickly swapped presents, dropped off something to Christy (who was working on the next show's program), ran in and out of Craft Warehouse and then braved the packed WINCO. It took awhile to navigate the parking lot, but we blazed through the store and stocked up on essentials for the weekend.

I dropped J.J. and Katherine off at their first Narnia rehearsal and then went to 3 more stores at Gresham station to buy presents & gift cards for a family from Dexter McCarty middle school that our fellowship group adopted for Christmas. Seems everyone else had the same idea (shopping)! Lines were long, but Grace and I whizzed back to the CYT parent meeting that went until 8:30pm. It was snowing and blowing pretty hard by the time we got home, but nobody was hurt and the roads weren't too bad yet.

That night, the winds really picked up and the skies dumped about 6 inches of snow (with drifts over 2 feet in some places). Gusts up to 55mph blew our deck chairs around and kept snow from accumulating on trees and rooftops. We awoke to a winter wonderland. Sovann went sledding with the kids while I made hot cocoa and actually cooked breakfast (biscuits & sausage gravy.)

Not surprisingly, Saturday's rehearsal was cancelled, including a photo shoot for the advertising posters for the show. (boohoo) We all spent a good deal of time on Facebook, connecting (artificially) with friends. We pretty much knew at this point that we'd have to cancel our trip to Grants Pass (the weather plus the fact that J.J. was just coming down with a cold). I called my mom and we cried together about being separated (again) for the holidays. But little did we know how much more bad weather was on the way.

Sunday morning, we found freezing mist coming down and a 1/2 inch of freezing rain on top of the now 8 - 10 inches on the ground. Church was cancelled, but we determined to have our own service. We prayed, sang some carols and listened to the Christmas story as narrated in Luke on Sovann's Bible Experience CD. We also started our snow fort, which didn't get very far because the snow was so dry (it was 20 degrees outside). We had frosty ice chunks on the inside of some double-pain windows, and even though it was cozy upstairs, it remained a constant 63 degrees downstairs in the house.

We took little loaf of banana bread next door to our neighbors and sang them, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." They handed us a box of Belgian Chocolates and later brought us a cheesecake and a big pan of sweet rolls! Lunch was tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (yum!), then we made/worked on and wrapped some gifts. After dinner (turkey and dumpling soup) we played "Word Sweep," a fun and challenging new game that GBC gave us (thanks everyone). Sovann and I were very impressed with J.J. and Katherine's vocabulary (and we're no biased a bit, really).

Here's a little clip of us playing outside. Katherine tried to make a snow angel, but it didn't work because of the layer of ice. J.J. and Grace were so light that they could walk on top of the ice without breaking through. Grace says in the video, "I'm saving snow daughters and snow sons." She picked up little chunks of snowy ice and gathered up in a pile - right behind Sovann's car (should make it fun to back out when things begin to thaw).