I Hate Winter!

I guess hate is a strong word--and winter can actually be beautiful, when viewed from inside a nice warm house. This year it made a mess of my Christmas plans. South Dakota had a prairie blizzard right during the week we planned for the whole family to get together. We wanted to get a picture with everyone in it--we don't even have a family picture with James in it. I know we will never keep up with the grandchildren, but it seems important to have all the adults in the same picture. My Dad has been wanting a current picture for years--he tells me every Christmas, birthday and Father's Day that all he wants is a current picture of our family. I thought I would finally be able to give him what he wants, but we had a major glitch.

It started on Monday when Kelsie and I drove to Vermillion to see Sam and his family. Dave called from Sioux Falls to tell us freezing rain was coming down. The first half of the drive home was fine, the second was horrible. No matter how much people complain of the heat in the summer, it doesn't come with deathly driving conditions unless you get stranded. Driving in blizzards is hazardous even on short drives close to home. I don't have time to do my rant on winter right now, it might come later.

We made it home--Kelsie did a great job driving. Then, Rosie and Brandon's plane got cancelled Monday night--they weren't even leaving until Tuesday morning. The earliest they could get rescheduled was Christmas Day. They decided to drive instead and made it here late Tuesday night. Molly and James managed to get in between two storms on Christmas Eve with only slight problems. The biggest problem was Megan, Bill and Sandy planned on coming Christmas Day, which is usually a great day to fly. Normally a lot less crowded than the days before Christmas. However, this year on Christmas Day the airport in Sioux Falls was closed, the interstates were closed border to border, north to south and east to west and everyone was told to stay home.

So the fourteen of us that were here did stay home and had a good time--thankfully the power didn't go out. I did learn a few things though. I need to rethink my emergency plans. We went through an amazing amount of milk and juice. I had planned to make trips to the store to pick up what we needed as we went along--the fridge only holds so much! Jessica grabbed some extra gallons of milk on her way here and we used the garage as an extra refrigerator. I do have powdered milk, but it was nice not to have to rely completely on it for those days.

For the amount of snow we got, it really wasn't as bad as it could have been. Since it was the holidays, people mostly stayed home and didn't have to try and get to work when the roads were so bad. There was a good break between the two biggest parts of the storm that we could get out and do some things before it really socked us in. It was fun to be together--and no one got stranded in an airport--my biggest worry as the week progressesd. However, you will notice that Bill, Megan and Sandy are sadly missing from all our pictures. Next time we do a big family get-together it won't be planned in the winter.

It snowed for two more days after these pictures were taken. We got over 20 inches of snow, but it came over a few days, not all at once. I, for one, kept counting my blessings that we were safe and warm.