I got to sleep in today as the office was on a delayed open. I had been planning on not attempting to go in until late anyway knowing that the snow had to stop falling and the roads had to be cleared before I could make an attempt. So I did not get up until seven thirty, which was nice.
I tried heading into the office, using the Acadia as it is much larger and has the new tires, a little before ten. The sun was out and it was super bright and crisp but it was a scant seven degrees when I went outside. I made it no farther than the turn onto the next road before I realized that I could not keep the car moving reliably and needed to turn around. So back home I went. No way can I make it to the office, the roads were solid ice with hard packed snow on top. So slippery. Our own development is under continuously plowing and they actually have it mostly cleared, but the moment you are on the county roads, you are out of luck.
We got to spend the morning together as a family. The girls were so excited that I was home. We played with some of their new toys. When Dominica got up she assembled Luciana’s Fisher Price ipad Barnyard set (it’s a physical barnyard that gets built on top of the iPad so that you can interact with things – it is a really cool idea) and later on worked on building Liesl’s enormous new collection of Playmobil toys. Liesl now has the complete Playmobil zoo collection and wants to put it all together into a single, massive zoological park.
We had a great time with our surprise morning together. We pretty much did nothing but just play with new Christmas toys and make fires in the fireplace all morning.
In the early afternoon the sun had been out long enough that it seemed like there might be a decent chance that the roads might have been cleared so I gave it another attempt with the Acadia. This time the drive went fine and I was able to get into the office. This made for a short day for me but I felt that it was good that I went into the office, even for a short day, because there was working needing my attention and I did not want people to be waiting on me just because I live in the middle of nowhere.
I made it to the office on this second attempt without incident. The roads were mostly good the entire way. Nothing really bad at all. I was very productive at work and was one of only very few people who made it in at all. So I feel good for having made the effort. Everyone left on the early side as it was expected to be crazy cold tonight once the sun was down. I did not want to deal with another layer of ice forming where the salt water had been before.
I am in the midst of reading “A Swiftly Tilting Planet.” That will last a few more days.
On the way home I stopped off at the Yorktown Deli and grabbed dinner for Dominica. They know that we are vegetarians and they made her a platter of freshly made falafel which Dominica said was awesome. (How does Google Chrome not know that falafel is a common food? I can’t believe that I had to add that to my local dictionary. That is just sad. How common does a food have to be to not be in there?) It really looked good but I had had lots of great cheese and crackers at work’s happy hour so did not need anything further for dinner.
This evening Liesl and I began playing “The Night of the Rabbit” which I got recently in a Steam sale. The graphics and music are amazing (the story might be too, we just are not far enough in yet to have determined that.) Dominica came down to the basement with the laptop and set up on the black couch to be near us. She had us turn the one monitor around and duplicate the screens so that she could do her own thing but watch us play the game when she wanted to as well. That worked really well. It made it a lot more like a family game night rather than Liesl and I doing our own thing. Liesl played for probably an hour and a half or maybe more. She loved this game. She was so excited that she was bouncing all over. I barely had to help her at all, she is so good at the game. It has new controls that she has not used before and yet she learned them in just a couple of minutes. Luciana really liked watching the game too and spent a lot of time on my lap trying to squeeze in with us while we played too.
When bed time rolled around I read the girls another two chapters in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” I am very happy that the girls are enjoying real literature rather than just children’s stories so it is actually fun to read the story, not only to spend time with them. I am looking forward to all of the stories which we will get to read now.
It was a good day. I was very thankful for the many hours of extra family time that I got today as a surprise. The girls and I pretty much spent the entire day together. It was a great day. And while I still went to work, it will make this feel almost like a three day weekend – a great wrap up to the holiday weeks.