We have had our Wednesday night church services cancelled due to blizzard conditions not once, not twice, but three weeks in a row!  It seems that all our vicious weather wants to come on Wednesdays.  Perhaps we should consider just calling off mid-week meetings until May.  (I would have said April, but you may recall my mentioning that we cancelled services last year for a mid-April bizzard.)  It would save a lot of thinking and effort.

We've also cancelled afternoon piano lessons two straight weeks, so our Wednesdays have been remarkably less busy than usual.  I can't complain about having the unexpected time at home.  When it's cold and blustery, it's nice to just cozy up and not go anywhere.  Besides, I help teach our Wed night Kids' Club, so having a night off --or three-- is a nice break.

Two weeks ago, Cheez' "snow day" off school was actually on Tuesday.  Most schools, including hers, were back in session Wednesday, but by the time we returned from piano lessons & errands around 4:00, the weather had turned bad again.  I had just put the finishing touches on my Kids' Club "10 Commandments" project when I got the call that church was cancelled.  (We just moved that topic back a week... and then another week... and now another.  My project is STILL waiting to be used.  It's been nice not having to come up with new things!)

That weekend was bitter cold, with single-digit temps in the evenings.  It was not fun to be out and about.  But Monday- that would be LAST week Monday- they soared up above freezing, and Tuesday temps were in the high 40's with RAIN.  It was a pretty drastic change in temps, but not nearly as drastic as what came that night.  In a mere nine hours, the temp dropped 40 degrees, from 47 to 7. 

Now generally speaking, I'd far rather have snow than rain in the winter.  Winter rain makes the world ugly and slushy, whereas snow makes everything pretty.  But snow is nice in somewhat small increments, without swirling winds.  You know, big fluffy flakes falling in a vertical direction.  That's not what we got last week.  Wednesday morning we awoke to find snow plastered pretty much everywhere except the ground, so fierce had been the winds.  Big tufts of snow covered our glass doors -even the ones "sheltered" by a 6-foot deep porch- and the insides of our porch columns.  Opening the garage door even for a minute meant everything in the entire garage was instantly covered with a thin layer of snow.  The roads were covered with black ice and visibility was practically zero.

Of course, every district around cancelled school again... except the "homeschool districts", of course.  Yes, for the second straight week, Fuzz & Spaz had to do "school as usual" (except for piano lessons) despite Cheez' day off.   They get long play-in-the-snow breaks when it's nice snowy weather.  When it's nasty out, they may as well be sitting inside doing schoolwork, right?

They know they get many more days off than Cheez does anyway, and they didn't complain TOO much.  Nor did they take Huz' employee's suggestion that they "find out where the superintendent lives and egg her house".  Probably because they knew they'd have to clean it up.  (Besides, Fuzz would consider that a waste of perfectly good food.)  And maybe because I generously let them have indoor "action breaks" & play breaks instead of forcing them outside in the blizzard.

That was last week.  This week was much the same-- rain on Tuesday followed by plummeting temps and blowing, driving snow on Wednesday.  Today's blizzard, though probably worse than last Wednesday's, didn't come early enough for schools to be cancelled, but it was horrid enough by noon that many things were closing.  Huz asked us to cancel piano lessons for yet another week.  (Fortunately, our teacher is flexible & understanding.)  It's a 25-mile round trip for us, and in that sort of weather I didn't even dare drive down the street to the library to pick up my holds!  I had to bundle up in boots and heavy coat just to run the 30 feet to Huz's shop.  Fuzz actually did attempt to go outside and play, but was back inside within a couple minutes.

I have to admit to being secretly glad that church would undoubtedly be canceled again.  Apparently, I'm getting a little spoiled. 

It remains to be seen whether Cheez will have to go to school tomorrow.  If not, she'll end up with a 4-day weekend, since Friday is a scheduled day off for conferences.  But the younger two won't.  They already had this past Monday off to recover from their weekend up north, and we had a light day Tues because, well, it was just "one of those days".  So we'll be trying to get in at least some semblance of a schoolday the next couple mornings before we run off to soccer (if it's not cancelled) and rescheduled piano lessons.  It does make it harder to have a 'normal" day when Cheez is off school, but she is usually happy to sleep til noon so as to not disrupt our flow.  Isn't she a sweetheart? :-)

So no "snow days" for WACKOS this week, either.  We'll save those for more pleasant weather.  

***

Speaking of days off...  There was a story in last night's news about some major vandalism that had occured at my neice's high school, resulting in school being closed for the day.  Tonight, they followed up with the news that the vandals -all students at the school- had confessed.  And their motive?

They wanted "a day off school."

Well, they got one.  And much more.  It is hard to fathom that sort of thinking.  Or lack of thinking, or whatever.

Just in case Fuzz & Spaz had any ideas, we told them that they had better not try that at home.