The Blizzard

We’d been praying for it, for years, and IT was happening! While hubby was a bit disappointed he wouldn’t be missing any work days, we were still hyped by the impending weather. Apparently the storm was hard to track…I have no idea. I have no cable and don’t watch weather sites, all I use is the generic weather app that comes on the I-phone. Sometimes I look at it, most of the time I do not. But this time I was watching it. I was so anxious with anticipation I couldn’t contain myself. Not only had the storm changed from several inches to several feet, there were also high winds and the likelihood of power outages. Excellent! We had the devices charged, the batteries stockpiled, along with a mountain of fire wood in the garage. The hubby even cleaned the garage out enough to get his car inside – this alone was a historic event!

As we hunkered down Friday night in front of a fire, I was so thankful for the upcoming time together, alone as a family just the six of us. It’s not often that we all get to spend that time together just being. We all needed it, our schedules had been taking us different directions and this was going to be the time we needed together. To mentally detox, physically relax and reconnect as a family. Saturday morning I awoke to blustery winds and already 6 or more inches of snow on the ground. As I got a hearty breakfast together for our family I couldn’t help but think of how awesome it is to have a God so powerful He gives you exactly what you need when you need it.

I kept the fire going, food flowing (forget the milk – I wish I’d had some paper plates!) and snow clothes dry and ready. As hubby shoveled for hours at a time, kids ‘helped’ shovel, came in and out for food, played games and participated in making our home look like something out of an episode of Hoarders. But we were there, all together, just the 6 of us…ok and an occasional straggler child from the neighborhood. As Saturday evening fell upon us and the storm started to settle I could barely wait to spend the next few days hunkered down now that the majority of the heavy work had been done.

Now, I know this wasn’t the case for everyone…but upon wakening Sunday morning…the street was plowed, there was a church service scheduled for 1pm and people were asking me what I was doing that day. Oh no way! What happened to the blizzard…to the 31 inches of snow we got. Yep I could still see it out my window, but why was there not more of an apocalypse situation happening out there? In ’96 we were stuck in for days, literally the roads weren’t plowed. Hubby and I were just dating and after three days of being stranded he trudged through all that snow until he hit a road that was plowed then had my dad come and get him…awe talk about love! Fast forward 20 years and 31 inches of snow is no longer an issue? And why is everyone so eager to escape back out into the world so quickly, that same world they are so often complaining about? Great if things are open and people want to venture out, but why? Didn’t those same people buy the grocery store just days ago…they surely couldn’t be out of food already. Why are we so afraid we are going to miss something? Why can’t we sit with ourselves in a quiet room in our pj’s for three days straight and be content with it? Are we afraid of what’s inside the four walls of our homes? Or is it that we are afraid of what’s inside the four parts of our hearts? Are we afraid of having too much time with our family? I wasn’t going anywhere…I wasn’t getting out of my pj’s yet, I was going to be snowed in.

And I was going to do snowed in kind of stuff like bake, with my son…we made an apple crisp- and I’ll even share the recipe with you at the end. And I played games on the floor in front of the fire, and I listened to my daughter lay down some tracks and loop them to some songs she’s working on, and I took a nap, and hubby took a nap, and I cooked, and cooked and cooked some more. And I stayed home…for four days (almost until I took my daughter to work late Tuesday afternoon) and I survived. I got to spend time coloring shrinky dinks with the kids while hubby made rude comments about them (the shrinky dinks not the kids this time 😉 and we stayed up late and watched movies and slept past 5am. And I dried snow clothes over and over again. And it was amazing! And I missed nothing…but I gained so very much.