Our white house was remarkably in sight amidst the thickly falling white snow and piled white snow drifts, and we were almost home. I was feeling relieved and about to turn left into our driveway when I saw the foot-plus deep column of snow running down the middle of the street, barricading my way. Grandview's meager pickup truck snow plow scoops off the top half of the snow and piles it in the middle of the street and on the sides of the street, making it slick, spinny work making left turns across the median. So I drove past our house, planning on turning around at the high school and come at the house from the other direction to avoid getting stuck in that deep snowy barricade. A noble plan, to be sure, except for one unforseen problem: the far end of our street had deeper, softer snow than the rest of it. The road turns in an L shape, and a big Suburban was parked right on the crook of the L. So I had to go around the beastly vehicle into the deep churned up snow near the middle of the road. That's where I got stuck. Tires spinning, I felt my panic rise. Yes, I was only a couple hundred feet from home, but positioned like that slanted along the L of the street, I was a big fat Honda road block! I spun my wheels a little longer, then said a desperate prayer, put it in park, and got out to check the front tires. I clawed as much snow out from under the front of the van as I could, then got back in and gently pushed the gas. Spin-spin-spin. I racked my brain, trying to remember what Jeff did one time when we got stuck in the snow up in White Pass a couple of years ago.
I ended up gently tapping the gas pedal while rotating the steering wheel back and forth like I was driving one of the kids' Plasma Cars and eventually the tires caught hold of some less-icy snow and we squiggled and slipped our way down the street, turned around at the high school as planned, braved that same deep snowy street a second time, and at last pulled into our driveway. My adrenaline was pumping, and I didn't realize it till we were parked safe and sound at home. I HATE driving in the snow! It stresses me out, and our van is infamous for its non-ability to traverse textured trails. I was doing my best not to freak out too terribly, but I was feeling pretty high strung for the next hour anyways. I called Jeff at work and regaled him with the tale, whereupon he informed me that the best technique for maneuvering a stuck vehicle is to go backwards and forwards over and over. Oh well, my prayer made up the difference between my lack of snowy know-how and I swore off driving for the rest of the day.
"Oh no!" I realized a few hours later, "I promised Jay and Rose that I would pick them up from school today!" No WAY was I taking our van anywhere near that perilous bottleneck carpool line of doom! So I bundled up with Amber, tossed her into the baby basket, and we headed out on foot to meet Jay and Rose so they wouldn't feel let down by their cowardly mother (or maybe the word is safe? Amazing how closely those two often dance). The snow was falling, the footing was floundering, and by the time we made it down our street to the sidewalk, my trapezious was tense and my shoulders aching. Carrying Amber when she's wearing just a shirt and pants is one thing, but carrying Amber when she's marshmallowed out in full snowsuit gear feels at least twice as heavy. When we got to the sidewalk, I lifted Amber down and let her walk to the school. The high plowed snow banks on either side of the sidewalk created a convenient border, keeping Amber on track. She trotted along happily, unable even to step up onto the snow piles on either side--no escapes possible! Oh yeah! Too bad she was wearing sneakers instead of boots because the melting van puddles in the garage had seeped over to her discarded boots and soaked them through earlier in the day. She was content enough slipping and walking in sneakers, though.
We arrived at the school five minutes before dismissal, and waited around. I put Amber back into the basket and the usual dozen or so admires paid their respects to the classic baby basket. Kids started pouring out of the school, but I saw no sign of Jay or Rose. Finally, Rose's teacher came over and asked if I was looking for my kids. She told me that they had already left! So I power-walked along the snowy sidewalk, lugging that heavy basket and searching. At last I saw their retreating backs FAR in the distance--they were halfway home before I caught up to them! Then the breeze picked up and we were favored with an arctic side wind for the rest of our walk home, causing Amber to call out "Brrrrr! Toad!!!" (Brrr! Cold!) Over and over until we turned the corner and the wind was at our backs. A guy with a couple of kids in his back seat rolled down his window and asked if we needed a ride. He expressed concern, shock, and judgemental eyebrows at the fact that we had chosen to walk home in the frigidity. He kept saying "are you sure" in response to my repeated "no thank yous" with a disbelieving, slightly mysogenistic "I see you have the baby and the kids and you shouldn't be out in this..." I firmly declined and we hiked the last few feet home.
HOT CHOCOLATE all around!
I still can't resist these darling chubby birdies!
Here are a few pictures from Sunday, when the snow had piled up enough for our stake to cancel church. The kids and Jeff had a snow day from school on Monday too--and we didn't even go outside to play in the snow once on that day! We got the shoveling and snow-playing out of our systems on Sunday afternoon. The snow is too powdery to do much more than pile up, and it's too deep for our sleds to handle on the nearby hill. But our driveway pile sure got big! Jeff started it with last Sunday's snow, then stuck our Christmas tree into that pile. Then a week later on the following Sunday, he doubled the pile's height so the spindly Christmas tree was practically buried in the mountainside. I like to think that our mountain-grown Christmas tree felt at home as it breathed its final breaths. The kids used it as a handle and a foothold to climb the snow mountain--Mt. Jay, we called it, since he has been shoveling our driveway a lot this winter.
After plenty of mountain-climbing, sliding, and slam-dunking, we dug out a snow cave. It started getting darker and colder as we dug so the cave did not reach its true potential size-wise, but it was still big enough for all three kids to fit inside together (with a reasonable amount of claustrophobia)
While crawling into the cave, Amber scraped a large snowball off the entrance, down into her collar, and screamed in agony for a while before I figured out the problem. Poor girl had a red spot on her back where the snow had frozen her tender skin!
HOT CHOCOLATE all around!
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