Snow Day
Thursday, January 20, 2011
The morning was a white world. Reports of eight to eleven inches, perhaps, with two more on the way. Or…
“Seven and a half inches on the trashcan lid,” said OLeif, coming back in with a ruler.
Needless to say, OLeif was to work from home for the day.
As things got moving for the morning…
Puck rolled himself up in his soft purple blanket and inched his way like a worm across the floor to the unexpecting OLeif. He grabbed his ankles.
“Oh no! It’s the space slug from outer space!”
At breakfast, somehow in the excitement of the snow, prayers were forgotten.
“Mama!” Puck exclaimed, “We haven’t prayed yet! Now don’t eat another inch!”
Collette closed her eyes, and Puck protested.
“Me first, Mama! Me first! Dee-or Jesus, dank you for saving us and dank you for my food, and dank you for saving my baby brudder in Colombia. Namen. Now it’s your turn, Mama!”
Then Dad’s daily email devotional…
“For if it were left to man’s decision (man’s ability to follow God’s commands or even the ability to put his faith in Jesus), no one would be saved and all would be lost (eternally separated from God)…”
“Why would they be lost?” Puck asked.
“Because we’re all lost in sins,” Collette replied. “We’re all a mess, and God saves us so we’re not lost anymore.”
Puck nodded…
“But Jesus always finds the lost people,” he concluded.
Collette continued the morning with finishing the translation of a third of her iTunes library, of which most was OLeif’s or Rose’s music anyway, to Rose’s iPod, ‘Edgar’, loaned out for the trip.
And then out into the white, still falling, fluff. Wading through high snow, Collette shoveled off the driveway to prepare the sledding track. And before long, she and Puck had their very own ‘rollercoaster’, a track that was becoming increasingly faster and faster as they crammed themselves together inside the Tupperware box and took off.
Everything was so quiet. Only the whistle of trains off in the snow somewhere.
In other news…
Rose had finished her archaeology bridging course, passing with flying colors.
In the afternoon…
Collette and Puck covered notebook paper in Arabic ink stamps.
Another romp in the snow for Puck with his daddy, wherein they built a snow slide in the backyard together. The snow had still been too soft for packing, but with a pitcher of water in hand, work progressed.
This was followed with peppermint snow ice cream.
“Yuck,” was OLeif’s conclusion.
“I like pep’mermint!” Puck declared.
And OLeif decided that it was a night for burgers. Red Robin take-in. Bacon burgers, steak fries, sodas, and a giant wedge of Mountain High Mudd Pie, of which OLeif had only one begrudging bite over Relative Values, staring Julie Andrews, Colin Firth, and Stephen Fry.
Come evening, Collette had finished packing her travel bag, ready to join Grandma Combs, Mom, Carrie-Bri, Cherry, and Linnea-Irish for a road trip to Jacksonville on a cruise to the Bahamas.
And so until the 29th……