Snow Days

It's ineviteable that we will get snow here in Indiana, and always a possiblity that it will disrupt school, which is why they schedule three snow days into the school year. But what boggles the mind is that we have used four snow days so far, and none of them have been because of snow. We get stuff cancelled here for any reason: ice, snow, fog, or just because it's too darn cold. In fact, I'm thinking of cancelling school because it's still dark when the kids catch their bus. Isn't that fair? Who makes these rules?

Over the past month or so the excuse for the delays and cancellations has been ice, ice, baby (sorry, couldn't resist). It's enough to make you scream--you might have heard me. I hate ice. Ice is the worst. Ice is like the jerk that grabs your arm during a scary movie, laughing at you as you flail your arms throwing popcorn everywhere. You never see ice; it just sits there waiting for the right moment to put you in a spin. So I was driving Bryce home from school Wednesday and it was snowing on wet streets that were starting to freeze. He didn't think it would be too hard to drive in bad weather (he's a teenager; what does he know?). Well, as we approached a four-way stop that I've known to be dangerous in cold weather, I put on the brakes. Immediately the ABS kicked in and you could hear the clicking as the brakes tried their best to stop. I knew it would happen and had been keeping my eye on the empty intersection. We stopped five feet past the stop sign and I gave him a superior look. "That's why you're not driving," I said, and for once he didn't try to talk his way around me.

However, there are some good things about having an occasional day off. When school gets cancelled, everything else on the calendar seems to cancel out too, allowing us the time to do some fun stuff. Take a look and see. We did another donation drive for the animal shelter (Bryce says this was not fun) and stayed to play with our furry friends. Rachel and Jason went roller skating, and the little kids are loving those rare days when we really do get--snow! Ah, winter. Now, if we could only get our temperatures back into the teens, we might enjoy it more. Forty degrees sounds nice, but that won't be here for a while. Better to stay indoors for now. I think Monday we'll go bowling, and I say, the last one to bowl a strike has to bake a batch of cookies. Yeah!