This week in Texas we have been feeling the wrath of Old Man Winter. Hello February! On Tuesday morning, we woke to freezing rain. When I say freezing rain, I mean rain that has turned to ice. Everything that was wet, froze over, and was SO slippery! The rain itself was little bits of ice. Our roads were solid sheets of ice, and un-driveable. The schools were closed. Many offices and businesses were closed. Basically, life shut down in the Dallas area.
Which meant we had to come up with activities to do at home.
To make matters worse, our heater broke. We were in the middle of playing games with our girls (Operation and Don't Break the Ice...) when we smelled a burning smell. We looked around for fire... but found nothing. I checked the thermostat, and it was set at 72 but it was only 68 in the house. I messed with it a bit. The heater would not turn on. I called our Property Management office, got a hold of the man on call, and he said that no maintenance workers were running trucks because of the weather/driving conditions. Great. No heat, freezing temperatures outside... what could go wrong?
Well, we got two little space heaters going, and bundled up. The temperature kept falling in our house, so we went out on the icy roads to find dinner at a warm restaurant. At bedtime, we put the girls into one bedroom in their sleeping bags with lots of blankets and a space heater. We took the other space heater to our room and snuggled down.
Sometime in the night the power went out. When we woke up it was 54 in our house, the power was out so we couldn't run the space heaters or the oven to warm it up, and there was no school again, because everything was still covered in ice.
Dave walked over to the wooded area across from our house and found enough fallen branches to bring home and burn in our fireplace. (Yes, the University was closed too, so Dave had been staying home with us too!) We got a fire going, and with the power coming on for good around noon, were able to warm up a bit. The technician came around 2:00 and fixed our heater and we were finally able to get the heater running. This was day two of no school, and the girls were getting restless. We got some sugar cookie stuff from Grandma in the mail, and made those.
We played games, watched TV and movies, and kept busy until bedtime again. When I checked the school district website, there it was... NO SCHOOL ON THURSDAY. Day three.
By this time, we were all a bit crazy. There were six of us at home, stuck, for three days straight with not a lot to keep us busy. Mom had to bring out the big guns. Craft time.
We busted out some wood and paint and crafted for a while. Then we braved the icy roads to make a run to Costco. It was nice to get out and walk around. After dinner, we took a walk in the freezing neighborhood, then came home and turned on an exercise video.
I was hoping that the girls would have school on Friday, just to give us all a little break... but, no such luck.
Snow came in the night, and covered the already icy roads up with 6 inches of powder. The conditions were crazy! This meant day 4 of no school!
The girls bundled up and played in our backyard for a while, but they don't have proper snow gear anymore, so they got wet and cold pretty fast. We made it through the day playing games, watching movies, and just trying to keep out of each other's way!
We are still covered in snow and ice, but it is supposed to warm up to the 40's for the next two days, so hopefully we will thaw a bit before the next system comes through! That is one thing I have noticed about living in Texas... everything changes so quickly. Last weekend we were warm in the sunshine, and this week we have been freezing our hineys off! It has been hailed the "Biggest storm in a long time." But, everything is bigger in Texas, right?!
Today Brooke woke up at 6:15 to open presents before Daddy had to leave for work and they had to get ready for school. It was a little family party to start her day off! We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast and she got to wear one of her new outfits to school.
Five of her friends came. (In the picture are Brooke, Keely, Danielle, Lizzi, Makenna, and Autumn. Saori wasn't there yet when the picture was taken.) We played games and had cake and ice cream, 
and of course opened presents.
Mostly, these girls had fun running around the house screaming their loudest and highest pitched screams. All at once. As loud as possible. It was cute the first time...
She is an amazing, smart, fun, happy, adorable girl... and we love her very much.
