I had my doubts that anything would actually happen with the weather as Texas weather is notorious for doing the opposite of what is predicted. When huge storms are predicted, we get nothing, but when it says it will be light flurries, we get two feet of snow. The same thing goes for tornadoes.
James and I thought about cancelling our appointments for Thursday, but the roads were still fine around noon, so we went in. We usually carpool as we live pretty close to each other and pretty far away from the office. I called Rob just before James got here and asked if it was paranoid to grab one of our 72 hour kits and bring it with me. Rob (Mr. Survival Prep Man), said it wasn't paranoid at all and I better bring one, just in case. It was James' turn to drive and he showed up in his 4 wheel drive SUV. He didn't think I was crazy for bringing the 72 hour kit as he had one in the back of his car too.
As we drove in, it started raining and the rain started freezing to the car, covering it in a thin layer of ice. We called one of our clients and they were still planning on coming, plus we discovered the groups for that night were not cancelled, so we kept going. The office was actually pretty full. Our office has three largish therapist offices (Mark, Shane, and Melissa have those), two smaller offices (one of which is rented out to a computer guy who helps with our website, etc, and the other of which is mine and James'), a smaller office that is our computer room, a very small kitchen, a waiting room, and a bathroom. All four therapist's offices were full as five of us were there. Not many of our clients were though. We actually had about two hours with not a single client. I didn't mind though as we had a really good time talking.
James and I had appointments scheduled until 9pm, but we decided to leave at 7pm due to the weather. We managed to get a hold of the 8pm client and cancel, but couldn't reach our 7pm clients. They showed up and it turned out it was a good thing we were still there as there was an issue that really couldn't wait. Our one hour appt turned into 3 hours.
We finally left the office around 10pm. I was glad James was driving and had 4 wheel drive. We stopped and grabbed dinner at Taco Bell, then headed home. Usually I can make it home in 30 minutes without traffic. There wasn't much traffic, but the roads were so bad it took us two hours to get to my house and another 90 minutes for James to get to his house. It was actually really fun and I was glad I went in instead of cancelling everything :)
The weather got progressively worse that night and by the next morning, the streets were solid ice. Everything was closed. Rob didn't even go in to work. Having lived in places like Idaho and New England, I know it seems silly to be trapped by a couple of inches of precipitation. The issue is that DFW doesn't have any snowplows or sanders or salters. And there are lots and lots of overpasses. It's not usually a problem as DFW rarely stays below freezing for longer than 24 hours and everything melts. It becomes a much bigger problem when it stays super cold.
It is not warming up. Everything is shut down. Church is already cancelled for tomorrow. There are accidents all over the place and pretty much every highway is shut down due to jack-knifed 18 wheelers or car accidents. Almost 300,000 people lost power in DFW (our power lines are underground, so we didn't fortunately). As of right now, it's not supposed to warm up enough to start clearing the roads until Wednesday. I guess we'll see! :)
The kids love being trapped at home with snow (sort of - more like tiny hail) to play in and hot cocoa to drink. I have found this weekend to be a Godsend. Yesterday I managed to complete my final project for this quarter (a transcription paper), translate my whole John School power point into Spanish, get every assignment for this quarter turned in except my timesheets, which I have to wait until this coming Friday to turn in. I used today to catch up on this blog . Yay for having time to actually get things done! Writing our Christmas Letter is next on my list :)
A few photos -
Eva's concession to the cold was shorts rather than her tutu and an unzipped coat.
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