Can you believe Georgia now has had two winter storms within a couple of weeks? This time the city was prepared... schools have been closed since Tuesday, people are staying off the roads, and thankfully Justin has been working from home. We haven't left the house since Monday and it's been fabulous! I'm not one for snow and cold weather but it sure is fun when it's so rare and everyone gets stuck at home together.
It started on Tuesday with rain, freezing rain, and a tiny bit of snow. Wednesday it was freezing rain and sleet ALL day and then last night it turned to snow. We got in some play time outside this morning before the big thaw. It's melting like crazy! That's the other thing I love about winter here.. in the rare occasion that it does snow, it's gone within a day or two!
Well.. we survived Snowmeggedon 2014 in the ATL. It was such a catastrophic event that it was covered in the national news so I'm sure everyone has heard all about it... how 2 inches of snow shut down the entire city! NOW I understand how that can all happen. It was a perfect storm of more snow than predicted, six million commuters leaving work at the same time, gridlock on the highways, cars running out of gas, inadequate equipment (I read that Atlanta owns 40 plows. They used to own four, but apparently the city went through a similar 'storm' in 2011 so they upgraded to 40), icy roads, and inexperienced winter drivers.
Justin tried to make it home but after moving 500 yards in TWO hours, he gave up and went back to work. Luckily he happened to be running a training class at a hotel for work this week, so despite the fact that every hotel within a 30 mile radius was completely booked, Justin was able to crash on someone's floor for the night. In the morning, the hotel lobby was filled with people who had slept on the lobby floor or chairs. He finally made it home by 11 am the next morning. The highways were filled with abandoned cars. People either ran out of gas or decided to walk home. My neighbor left work at 12:15 pm and got home at 3:30 am. She had to drive a total of 20 miles. It took her 15 hours. Kids and teachers were forced to spend the night at school. Many children were stranded on buses the entire night. It was unreal.
Despite the chaos, the kids were thrilled! My neighbor had the girls over all afternoon and they had a ball in the snow. Claire claims it was the best day of her life!
It was unreal to watch the news and see all the accidents, abandoned cars, overturned trucks, etc.. all from two inches. Schools were cancelled for the rest of the week (despite the fact that it's fifty degrees and almost all of the snow has melted)! We gots to recover, peeps. This was cray cray.
Here is a video from the road Justin took to get home. Notice the exit ramp at the end that at was completely blocked by abandoned cars...
When Justin finally made it home the next day, there were some VERY happy girls to greet him!
What a crazy day! So thankful Justin made it home safely. There were tons of stories of people helping, opening their homes, rescuing stranded drivers, passing out food and water, etc.. It's so cool to see people come together in the midst of a crazy situation like this.
There ya have it... another adventure in the books!
It was fun to have snow to play in while we were in Iowa and equally as fun to say goodbye to it and return to the land of 50 degree winters!
The girls had fun playing in it and Claire is excited to return to preschool to tell all her four-year-old friends who have never seen snow all about her adventures.
...my kids do! So, I decided to embrace the snow-falling-all-day-long day for the sake of my girls (and because, really, what other choice do I have??). We stayed home (and in our jammies!) all day long, had a festive lunch, and even ventured outside for a few minutes after Daddy got home.
Snowman sandwiches for lunch!
Don't judge me on the lack of perfection... this was a total spur of the moment idea! ;)
We woke up to quite the storm on Wednesday morning! I think the snow total was around 13-15 inches. Crazy!! We have the tiniest driveway and it still took Justin 2 and 1/2 hours to shovel it. Our neighbor even came over to help with his snow blower. It was just nuts!!
Although I'm not a fan of cold and snow, I must admit that it was all pretty exciting!
Somewhere in there is our street. It was hard to tell the difference between driveway, yard, and street.
The side of our neighbor's house
Justin digging us out!
Holy blizzard batman!
Claire had a front row seat watching Daddy shovel!
Pretty girl!
Claire is really into activities, as she calls them, lately! Here was our snowy day activity.. playing with rice, warm and cozy inside!
... said to me by my 2-year-old before bed tonight! It was snowing all day long so we made the most of it! The teacher in me came out and we made and colored snowflakes and talked about the letter 's'. The letter part was probably over her head but I was having fun so I went with it!
The snow coming down in our backyard.
Emma hanging out in the high chair while Claire and I colored.
Claire and Daddy made a snowman after he got home from work! What a fun ending to a fun winter day! (I can't believe I just used the words 'fun' and 'winter' in the same sentence!!)
