It’s odd that I haven’t posted since “Holiday Traditions.”  This past Saturday was the annual Hawks Family Christmas Caroling, but Mark and I didn’t get to stick around.  You might be surprised that the weather got in the way.  Instead of caroling with the rest of the family, we drove back to the Iowa City area ending up going 30mph from West Branch (even on I80).  The road itself wasn’t that bad, but when the front came through, it sure seemed like blizzard conditions to us.

There are a lot of people dealing with this weather, so I’m not writing just to complain.  In fact, I am trying really hard to just be okay with the weather.  I don’t have to be happy about it, but there’s no sense in wasting anger on it when I can’t change it.  Yet, I do have a specific frustration.  It’s the holiday season!  This is a time when I want to visit my family!  The weather makes it very difficult to do that.  We were originally suppose to go to my dad’s last Thursday, but the ice/sleet/snow (yes we got all 3) storm stopped that.  Then the weather again cut our plans short on Saturday.  Mark and I try to be as flexible as we can, but there’s only so much a person can do!  My dad makes a fine point, that we have to be safe.  The traditions mean nothing if we get ourselves killed traveling to see family.  Part of me wants to break down, yell “but that’s not fair!” and throw a tantrum.  The grown up in me will just vent on my blog and move on.

I hope that you are all more easily able to visit your families this wonderful season!

I ordered a package recently and needed it delivered quick.  I went with 2-day air cause I needed to get start on the project (it’s fabric), which means it would be delivered today.  I went to check the status and it said “Exception UPS INTERNAL ACTIVITY CODE.”  So I decided to call.  The truck was in an accident and the agent was able to tell me that it is in between Des Moines and Coralville.  This means that the winter weather has taken a strike at me again.  My package is sitting in a truck on the side of I-80 and tow services are prohibited for part of the road still.

Mark and I might have the goofiest looking backyard right now:

We went out skiing. Mark had never gone, so I thought we’d start by learning technique in the backyard. I wanted to see what he thought. After one loop, he liked it, so we went over to the park area in our neighborhood. I’m wishing that we had tried this out earlier in the winter. We’ve had all this great skiing weather and we’ve only been out for 30 minutes. Still, it was great to get outside and enjoy this weather instead of staying inside with cabin fever.

I did find today a blog on Iowa skiing conditions. It looks really useful. We might have to suddenly take an afternoon off this week to hit the trails.

The abundance of snow we got on Sunday was quite the pain. Mark and I both went out and shoveled on Sunday and got the driveway clean. I had to use the garden spade to shovel ice; very fun. Monday came with President’s Day, which meant no mail. Tuesday came with…nothing, which meant no mail? Wednesday, no mail. Now I realized that we had to clean around the mailbox in order to get mail, but I thought we did as good a job we could. I was frustrated by this, but really didn’t want to go out there with my weenie arms and pick away at the ice. That’s where my hero came to rescue me…or my mail. Mark went out there in the freezing cold and took all his anger out on the snow bank. Thursday came and we got our mail! Mr. Snow Scooper Man, Mark, is truly my hero.

Mark has jokingly called several storms this winter “Death Storm 200[x]” (2007 in December and 2008 now).  He was usually exaggerating, but tonight…oh my.  The storm is producing an immense amount of snow, hail, sleet, freezing rain, rain, flooding, high winds, thunder snow, normal thunder, AND tornadoes!  The severe map from wunderground really says it all: