Blizzard 2011 and Other Musings

They predicted, and they predicted correctly. I think the official total for our area was 18", we haven't seen that much snow at one time for about 12 years.

Of course, I don't want my loved ones stranded out in it, but with the predictions as they were, many businesses in the area were shutting down early on Tuesday and already shut down for Wednesday as the storm moved in late Tuesday afternoon.

My family was no exception...my husband was sent home after half of his shift (he works 2nd shift, so was home early evening,) my son was sent home a bit early as the work they needed to do for the day was finished anyway, our married daughter (she's a nanny) was also sent home by late afternoon and was safely tucked in her apartment around the corner from us, her husband already on his way, too.

The only one in our family hugely affected by the storm was Rachel. She was due home on a flight from Paris Wednesday afternoon, which was pre-emptively cancelled Monday evening.

She had no way of knowing and no way to get in touch with us to let us know what was going on.

So she flew from Ouagadougou to Paris, her group all separated to catch flights on other airlines or to go explore Paris, and she went to her airline check-in only to find that her flight had been cancelled. (At right, she is with part of her group, in Africa.)

She arrived in Paris early Wednesday morning (Paris time, Tuesday night our time), with no way home. She tried to find people from her group, to no avail, and then went to book her new flight home. We found out Wednesday morning, through the organization she toured with, that she was on a flight from Paris to Dallas and would have to spend the night there as no flights were expected to fly into Chicago on Wednesday.

I stayed up until 3am Wednesday morning, partly hoping she could find a way to contact us, but mostly to enjoy the storm. I love these kind of storms and watched as the snow fell and drifted.

When she called Wednesday around dinner time, she had gotten her luggage, gone through customs, reserved a hotel room and was waiting on the shuttle bus. My baby is all grown up!

She didn't know until she arrived in Dallas why her flights had been cancelled (her Thursday morning flight had been cancelled while she was in the air, she had to re-book that as well.) We took pictures so she could see how everything looked before we dug out.

Rachel's car was all but buried in it and drifts left huge piles in some areas, but not so much in others.

I was intrigued by the snow that curled over the railing and hung there for days. It shrunk some a few days later as the weather warmed and some melting began, and Jonathan cleared it all off just this past weekend.

Mike and Jonathan spent 3 hours shoveling on Wednesday morning, we were thankful the storm had ended by then, it was predicted initially to continue on into Wednesday afternoon.

Ruthie and Lucas very much enjoyed the snowstorm, Ruthie watched as the snow slowly buried our table and flowers on the porch (first picture) and periodically would call someone to the window to look with her.

I spent quite a bit of time working on the Posies and Celtic in the last few weeks, as well as working on some of my patterns.

We have a busy weekend coming up, we hope, the newlyweds are supposed to be closing on a house on Friday so the weekend will be spent helping them move.

Joshua (oldest son) will sublet the apartment they are vacating and spend those few months looking for a place to go to after that, probably with a friend. That means he will be moving this weekend, too, so it will be a crazy one!

Ruthie continues to do well and has most definitely come into her own. Still still loves to have her picture taken, which has worked out nicely for Joshua's girlfriend who is an art major with an emphasis on photography. She has taken many, many pictures of Ruthie, who is even starting to take some direction for more specific photos. It's really fun to watch. And really, who can resist that face?

The days now are busy ones, and even those that I plan to be quiet seem to fill themselves up pretty easily. It's a nice kind of busy, though, mostly low stress and enjoyable.

Once these moves for the kids are over, I hope to settle into a good routine for my quilting and pattern work. Hopefully there won't be anything else big in the works for a while!

Hope this finds you keeping warm and happily busy!

Sue