How I spent my weekend

Friday afternoon, the kids and I flew to Houston to meet up with my husband and visit his family.  We celebrated an early Thanksgiving with his extended family.  My daughter spent her entire time in Texas running around with second cousins she never knew she had–literally running in the yard–and playing football (I heard she caught a pass and made a touchdown) and jumping on a trampoline.  She completely forgot that she  meant to be afraid of running into a rattlesnake.  (Her grandpa informed me that she was never in danger of running into a rattlesnake since rattlesnakes are mostly in west Texas . . . then he said something about copperheads and I thought to myself, “la la la, I can’t hear you . . . .”)

My boys hung out with distant cousins, playing guitars and joking around.

I helped out in the kitchen and chatted with various womenfolk.

So, we arrived in Texas at 10 p.m. on Friday night.
Did the whole Thanksgiving dinner with extended family on Saturday.
Flew home on Sunday afternoon.

We left Texan temperatures in the seventies, maybe eighties . . . and returned to Seattle where snow had fallen.  Fortunately, the hour drive home was uneventful.  Snow had fallen earlier in the day but the roads were only wet, not frozen.  We were home by 7:30 p.m.

Today, school’s began on time but the early-morning phone call from the district told us that the kids would only attend for half the day.  The roads were a little snowy at 9 a.m. when I drove my daughter to school.  An hour later, as I drove to the dentist, I realized how much worse things had gotten.  Heavy snow was falling.

While sitting in the dental chair, we watched a truck get stuck going uphill.  Not a good sign.

Scary.

But after I finished having my gums poked with sharp metal instruments and my teeth scraped, I bravely climbed into my mini-van and sped up the hills with determination and enough speed to carry me up hill.  I returned home without sliding off the road.

Tonight, as I watched the news coverage of the nightmarish road conditions, I became so thankful our drive home on the freeway last night was so carefree.

Tonight, cars stood on that very same stretch of road for hours in the dark, stranded on the streets of pure ice.  Semi-trucks were jack-knifed, a car caught on fire and a city bus in Tacoma careened out of control and hit a building, ending up rolled over on its side.

I’m so happy to be in my warm home, so grateful that our electricity is still on.  The winds are blowing hard tonight and the temperatures have dropped into the teens.  The high temperature tomorrow is predicted to reach 28 degrees.

Now if I could just recover from the exhaustion of spending nine hours in an airplane and five hours in airports, I’d be all set.