When Ice Falls

I checked Google Map’s estimated time to school. Two hours, two minutes. This wasn’t looking great.

When I got the text message from school announcing a snow schedule late-start, I wasn’t clear why until I realized that the streets were all coated in ice. In fact, it was bad enough that El Oso just worked from home. And when backroads suggested that Puck and I could still get to school in under an hour, we left an hour before class started.

Naturally, once we were on the road, everyone else decided to take the backroads as well. Free and clear highway. Stuck on the outer road. So close, and yet so far. While we sat, crawling, for miles, Puck counted 400 cars, then finally got tired of it.

One hour and twenty minutes later, we got there.

This spontaneity resulted in my morning spent at the Big House instead for final edits and working through the Christmas letter with the girls. Every year we haggle over the content and writing style, because no one feels like being too embarrassed.

By the afternoon, it was still cold, but the ice had decided to melt, so Carrie-Bri, Linnea-Irish, and I finished a little more Christmas shopping. I guess the trick is to physically shop on Cyber Monday when everyone else is holed up at home on their laptops. But it still seemed pretty crowded anyway.

When I picked Puck up from school, I saw him following his class down the hallway in the mid-act of sliding across the carpet on his knees. Again. He thought twice about it when he saw me, however. How many pants has he put holes in the past month already?

Unfortunately I discovered at dinner that the pants I just purchased for him on Friday already had a hole in the knee.

Of course.

Adoption Status Estimate: Down: 5 yrs, 3 mo.; To Go: 1 yr, 9 mos.