Requiem For A Van
A week ago Saturday was a big day in our house. After eight years and fourteen days, we cleaned out the minivan, drove it to a local car dealer and left it as we drove away in a new Jeep Grand Cherokee. That’s right: our days as minivan owners are over! I must admit, that minivan served us well. We…
Lost Month
As I write this, I’m sitting in the living room, looking out the front window, waiting for the next snowstorm to hit. The first flurries are expected to start falling in the next hour, and by morning we’ll have 8-10” of new snow. Yeah, I’m about done with this winter bullshit. What a waste of a month January was. St.…
Van Conversations
Overheard on the way home from school yesterday. C.: M.! Did you hear Justin Beaver got arrested?! (She still has a few words where she replaces B’s with V’s. I love that Bieber is one of them.) M. (bored): Yes. L.: Why’d he get arrested? C.: He egged his neighbor’s house. And he snuck out of a club. L.: Oh.…
The Lost Week
From January 25-27, 1978, the Indianapolis area got over 15” of snow, which came on top of 5” of snow from a few days previous. The winds howled at over 50 mph. Snow drifted to between 10 and 20 feet. The wind chills were below -50. People were trapped in cars on the highways. Amtrak trains were stranded on their…
A Foot
There’s no two ways about it: this sucks. Over a foot of snow. Windchills are currently -40. There are travel bans all over the area, meaning unless you have an emergency or you’re on your way to a shelter, you can be arrested for taking your car onto a road. And worst of all, M. and C.’s holiday break was…
Final Holiday Wrap Up
Happy New Year! We woke to 4-5” of new snow on the ground, with even more predicted for Saturday night. The girls are excited. I’m excited I can finally get them outside of the house for awhile. With apologies to all the fans of Epiphany out there, the holiday season has officially ended. Yesterday we took our tree to the…
365/0
That’s what the family calendar on the refrigerator shows this morning. Three hundred sixty-five days down, zero to go. Which means, though the sun will rise in the morning and the normal work-week will continue (for some) on Thursday, today is still an end and tomorrow another beginning. 2013 was, for the most part, great for our family. Three big…
Holiday Weekend
I woke up early this morning, for no real reason. I had been sleeping until 8:00, even 8:30, much of the past week. Something caused me to wake up shortly after 6:00 today, though, and after trying to fall back to sleep, I gave up. I went downstairs, made coffee, and enjoyed the silence of the morning with my current…
Christmas 2013
First, my obligatory annual statement about how fast Christmas flies by when you’re an adult. The time from final dismissal before Christmas break for the girls to about 9:30 last night, when the kids were all in bed, most of the clean-up was done, and we could just sit and relax seemed to pass in a blur. I think that’s…
Kid Catch Up
Here we are. Two days left on the Advent calendar. A couple loops left on the Christmas ring chain C. brought home. Done with school for the year. The cookies have all been made. Christmas day menu planned. Yep, it’s Holiday DEFCON level 1. All three school programs went well. M. shined as Mistletoe the FBI agent in her grade’s…