The things we do!

On Friday morning we had planned to visit some friends (C and E) who live about 15 minutes away. I have to drive on the parkways to get there, which is not too bad now as I am getting used to that. Some times I laugh aloud when I find myself driving here on amazingly huge roads full of busy, fast and big vehicles. Any way, I digress.

I knew that there was a snow storm coming, no problem really but I would stop by Mrs Greens on my way out rather than doing it on the way home to make sure I had milk, OJ and fruit to last a couple of days until the roads were better (i.e. had been plowed after the snow storm - which had yet to materialise at that point of course).

Then on to our friends house. I arrived at 10:10 am just as the snow started, but the 'storm' was not expected for a couple of hours and since we were only 15 minutes from home we thought we'd just stay for an hour and a half, keep our eyes on the snow and we'd be fine.

At 11ish C left the house to go into the city to do a few things at work. About 10 minutes later he called and told E that he had been in a car accident - sliding on the snow/ice and that she should suggest I head home NOW if I was going to go at all. Oh golly we said - about the snow and the accident too. C was ok, the other driver was ok but the car was quite damaged. Any way, I rounded up the children and we left.

Our friends live on a hill, not a particularly steep or high one, but you have to go DOWN which ever way you look at it, to get home. All of a sudden the hill's which seem so little on a nice sunny day seem terribly daunting and dangerous when covered in 6 inches of snow. E gave me some directions to limit the severity of the hill, just an alternative route down, and that was a help. Shortly after leaving their home J remembered that she had left her glasses behind, so a scary and slow ride around the block followed so that she could retreve them... with a not so happy mummy we continued.

About 500m down the main road the traffic halted, it was bumper to bumper with everyone inching along for the next half an hour - of course this was about 4km. Then another half an hour to complete the other 14km's of our journey. I had to remember to take deep breaths, loosen my grip on the steering wheel and sit back from my crouched forward position. The idea it seems is to avoid breaking as much as possible, given the propensity of the wheels to just slide along.

Finally we reached home and as I applied the breaks to slow for our drive way, they resisted and we slowly sailed right by the drive way. Since I was in the middle of the road, making a turn across two lanes I just put on my hazard lights and stayed there till the road cleared, reversed and greatfully pulled safely into the driveway. I am extremely glad that we chose an AWD car when we arrived, it certainly paid for itself on Friday.

Here are some of the images from the way home. I spent a lot of time sitting still so thought I'd take some snaps for prosperity. You can see the snow stuck to the windscreen wipers and the traffic you see is stationary too, it went on for miles. We finally got to the point of congestion to see a car sideways across the three lanes of the road, could not move - wheels just spun, so every one had to carefully drive around and hope that they too did not slide straight into the stuck car.







J's favourite thing to do in the snow - after skiing is.......making a snow angel.




Here they are trying to make a house out of snow, I think they are finding it a little more difficult that than first thought.


Our Boy's loving being in the snow.


And of course, after it all stops - at 9:15 pm we head out to shovel it. The danger is that over night it will turn into ice and be very difficult to remove. So for an hour and a half D and I shovelled as best we could. The next day, I did the steps and path again and then today, we did the driveway again. It snowed and then rained for a while, so we wanted to remove all the ice whilst it was soft and slushy, if it froze tongight the garbage man and post man would not be able to get down the drive way tomorrow and no one would be able to walk on it nor the path and steps. Oh what fun!