A Jen Too Many

It is currently snowing. We are told we can expect as much as another foot. My sweetheart gets to stay home from work tomorrow. The girls and I played Set this evening. Oldest Girl Child is incredibly good at it. I barely won the first round, which is pretty amazing when you consider that her age is measured in the single digits still and I am ... well ... old, OK?

Somebody stopped by yesterday and offered to finish shoveling our driveway for $25. I couldn't say, "Yes," fast enough and was tempted to throw myself at his feet in gratitude. The Boy Child, who would normally be earning the shoveling cash, has cleverly vanished from home for the last week and we have not heard from him. I am sure he will reappear once the snowstorms are safely out of the way and the driveway is cleared for good (or until next winter.)

No more school for the rest of the week. Youngest Girl Child got her snow week homework out of the way already, but she only had a couple of things to do. OGC has a whole package of papers and is starting to get snarly about the whole process of being required to do a small amount every day.

I thought about going to the store today to pick up a few things we are low on, but my sweetheart went out to pick himself up some soda and came home with the report that the roads are still very slick. So I decided we were fine for the rest of the week with what we have. Besides, judging from the photos I got in my email this afternoon, there is no point to going to the store right now - I have more in my pantry than they do on their shelves. (Note: These are not my photos. They are just a couple of the ones I was sent.)

Pictures of our recent snowstorm. We got about 2 1/2 feet, which is nothing to those of you in Idaho, Utah and other parts west, but is a huge amount here. They shut down school Friday in anticipation of the snow, canceled church today, and have canceled school for the first part of this next week and we may yet wind up having school canceled for the entire week. My sweetheart was told when he left work Thursday not to come in Friday, and has heard that his workplace is closed Monday, too.

It's been a very relaxing weekend for us. Except for the whole snow shoveling thing, that is. On the bright side, I'm sure my biceps are much more developed than they were Friday morning!

The girls are beside themselves with glee. They have never been in snow up to their knees before. and are wallowing in it (deliberately, that is, not because they've fallen and are stuck.) I told them that their Grandma's house gets this much snow all the time and now they want to fly cross-country several times a winter.

On a more serious note, I have been thinking a lot about the phrase, "If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." Disasters, large and small, are part of life, and I try to keep my family prepared for most of the calamities that I can think of. Because of that, this has turned out to be a nice little mini-vacation for us. We didn't have to hurry and get to the store before all the bread and milk were gone. We haven't had to worry about what we would do if we lost our electricity. We had a plan for frozen pipes. Being ready for the unexpected brought me much peace of mind this weekend.

The only thing I would change is to have bought a snowblower last fall. Excuse me. I need to go take some more aspirin. Can anyone help me get the lid off the aspirin bottle?

We almost didn't make it to midnight last night. Their father and I spent the last half hour of 2009 chivvying the girls into staying awake. Well, kind of. I kept telling them that they were free to go to bed if they wanted to, and he kept reminding them that it was only a few more minutes until the new year. They really, really wanted to blow their horns, so they made it, but they were tucked in bed and asleep just a few minutes later.

It's so funny to watch small people trying to stay awake. We followed a tradition that I loved from when I was a kid. We spent New Year's Eve eating chips and dip and playing games. (I highly recommend Sleeping Queens - got it on sale and am glad I did so. A great game! Especially good for princess loving little girls.) The games went well, the junk food was greeted with joy, the root beer floats overloaded their little systems and left Youngest Girl Child complaining that she didn't feel good. Although I think that was also simple exhaustion.

Girl Child was slumped in a corner of the couch, glassy-eyed, staring at the TV while she waited for the ball to drop in Times Square. (She was very disappointed to find out that it wasn't literally dropped.) YGC insisted on cuddling with me on my bed, wrapped up in a comforter. She had discernible dark gray half moons under her eyes and clung relentlessly until five minutes to midnight when both the girls perked up, decked themselves out in hats and cardboard tiaras and sat glued to the countdown, clutching their horns.

The ball dropped, much noise ensued here, the dog started barking wildly in response, the girls laughed at the dog, OGC protested that she hadn't seen the ball drop, we rewound and showed her that it wasn't actually "dropped" but lowered carefully, and then everyone got hustled off to bed, much to Mommy and Daddy's relief, because we were tired, too.

This morning, we all slept in.

Best Christmas present ever:

The Light of My Life has today off.