Snow Days

The Blizzard of Oz came dancing in this week, leaving little doubt in my mind that Mother Nature is a complete bitch who probably needs to retire.

With all of my darling children home this week, we got to do some serious bonding.

Ellie has enslaved me now as her personal hair braider.

Amelia is my number one foot massage client.

Caroline very thoughtfully informed me that "there is a commercial on TV for a lotion you can rub on your skin and it takes away stretch marks." (Luke added that if you call in the next 5 hours, you can try it for free.)

And dear Luke and I have had quite a run. He was hired by a neighbor to shovel the drive. What the neighbor failed to mention upon hiring was that his driveway was nearly completely covered with snow drifts over 3 feet high. I helped Luke drag his snowblower to his customer's drive and looked at the nine-year-old boy, alone with a shovel and a snowblower and 1200 cubic feet of snow and decided to help.

Two hours later I was certain of two things:  I never want to live in North Dakota and I would likely not be able to get out of bed in the morning.

But get out of bed I did, and a good thing too. Luke had the stomach flu. I wasn't positive he was sick until he threw up all the way down the hall from his bedroom (which, btw, boasts a toilet within five feet of his bed) to our bathroom, violating rule # 2 in our house (rule # 1 being "love thy brother and sisters"): "head for the toilet, not Mom." Because vomit is hard to clean up off carpet.

On the plus side, I have found a new distraction hobby and am working on accompanying myself on guitar to my own acoustic version of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."

And that is how we spent the Snowpocalypse.