Oh, My...SNOW!

OH. MY. GOODNESS!!  What a day! 

 

Have you ever had a day that takes a lot of planning to pull off?  One of those where every piece of the massive puzzle needs to fall into place in order to be successful?  One where the wheels completely fall off at some point during the day and all you can do is laugh??

 

Well, my friends, today was that day.

 

When I was watching the news this morning the local weather forecast called for 1-3 inches of snow that would begin as rain and turn to snow in the late afternoon.  I was mildly worried because I had a doctor's appointment that was a 45 minute drive from school in good weather.  Daughter #1 was attending an after school field trip for her Art Club and Daughter #2 had an orthodontist appointment.  My husband had arranged to get off work early so that he could go to the orthodontist appointment and be back at the middle school by the time the field trip was over.  That left me free to make the trek to my appointment.  I felt good.  I had a plan.  At least the snow wasn't going to affect us at school...

 

Now, I should tell you that last Friday, we had a lockdown drill at school in place of our weekly late start meeting.  As part of the lockdown, I lowered all of the blinds in the classroom.  I was too lazy to pull them back up figured that we could leave the blinds down to reduce distractions, so I had no idea what was going on outside my windows as I was teaching away this morning.  As I was finishing up my reading block at about noon, I needed to have a little chat with one of my kiddos in the hallway regarding his behavior.  As we walked into the hallway, and I caught a glimpse of the snow gently falling really coming down outside, I began to wonder just how bad the afternoon commute was going to be.  I began to worry about making it to my appointment on time.

 

Forty minutes later when we went to recess/lunch, (yes, you read that right...the kids go to recess at 12:40 pm and eat at 1:05 pm...LONG morning for third graders) I started to hear reports of just how bad the roads were.   

 

Since we ended up having inside recess and the kids had realized that it had started snowing, they were totally keyed up in the afternoon.  We made it through an introductory lesson on area, and were continuing our study of the solar system in science, when the announcements from the office regarding dismissal started.  Since it was only 3:00 pm and our school day ends at 3:40 pm, I figured it must be pretty bad.  I have to give our office staff a lot of credit.  They had a plan in place to dismiss kids in an orderly fashion, since it was clear that none of the busses would make it to school on time.  At 3:30 pm, they started calling kids to the office whose parents had come early to pick them up.  3:40 pm came and went with no busses.  The kids who get picked up were slowly trickling out of the room, but we still had all the bus riders.  At about 4:00 pm, the first busses arrived.  At 4:20 pm I still had one lone kiddo (plus my daughter and two other teachers) anxiously waiting in my room.  When his bus number was finally called, we all let out a shout of joy!

 

I am not ashamed to admit that as soon as all of the kids were accounted for, all of the teachers headed home to avoid driving in the dark.  While we were waiting for all the kids to be dismissed, I learned that the orthodontist appointment and the field trip had both been cancelled.  Whew!  I was still hopeful about making my appointment though.  That is, until I started driving.  Cars were moving at about 20 mph and there were several that I passed on my usually three minute drive home, that were in ditches.  I decided at that point to bag the whole adventure and head home.

 

We spent the rest of the night as a family cuddled up on the couch watching a movie.  All my planning had been for naught, but we were all home safe and sound!

 This is what it looks like outside my backdoor right now.  Only 5-6 inches, but very wet and heavy.  And yes...it's still snowing!

 

Well, I'm off to bed.  I am assuming that it will take some extra time to dig out in the morning, so I'd better get a good night's sleep!