That phrase has a new meaning this Christmas. I have lived through my first blizzard. As have all my traveling house guests. Yes, I was lucky, some of them refused to cancel despite my pleading and eventually my disinheritance. I thought that a disinheritance might keep them from trying to visit, but no. Finally I suggested train travel, as it would be much safer to get stuck on a train than to be stuck at the side of the road in a far...or dead.
Unfortunately we were unable to pick up anyone at the train depot in town due to the weather. We tried leaving our subdivision/street for almost 2 hours of shoveling, reversing, and pushing. Finally Daniel was getting sick from the exhaust fumes and we pushed the car to the side of the road and walked back home. I was certainly glad I was not in labor, as there was no way I would be making it to the hospital. Despite my upbringing and a couple of my siblings being home births, I like and trust my doctor and want her tot take care of the baby. We have insurance for a reason.
So after we got home we found out the train was just getting into the station. The police department was unable to send them a message, and the depot is officially 'unmanned' so there was no way to contact my parents. They called us from someone's cell phone and we explained that our car was stuck. The tried taxi's (none were running) and then walked to the Eldridge on Massachusetts. Anyone that has not been to the Eldridge, its a historic hotel built in the mid 1800s. Its really nice and the cheapest rooms are a good $150 a night. Anyway, from there we gave them walking directions and my sister Rachel headed out to meet them on their trek. No one got frost bite or needed limbs removed, though my father did insist that since it had stopped snowing it was no longer a blizzard and there were comments about how they were pioneers.
(don't get me started on any of this as I tried to cancel the whole travel thing to begin with and was met with them insisting the storm was moving to Missouri so I was just being mean and taking away their free agency)
Luckily I contacted my brothers and when I insisted they not come to Lawrence, they complied. They did travel to Emporia so Jarom could visit his son, and they almost died in the process according to them. Most people don't admit something like that unless it is true.
Anyway, aside from a stinky reaction between a parental unit and some edamame (because it DOES contain soy protein) once people were in my house they were not in danger. Rachel did get a little cabin fever (partly to due with the fact that we had been staying in the house since the weather got bad a couple of days before) and shoveled most of the block from snow including the hilly stop sign area 330 ft from our front door that we were unable to get past Friday morning. Daniel was able to get my parents and younger sister to the midnight train back to Dodge safely. In fact they even helped someone else who was stuck move their car.
I don't know the snowfall totals, as it snowed again last night, but it has been a long storm. The rain started Tuesday with occasional hail and power surges and outages. Thursday the precipitation was a very fine ice ball, super slick and the size of sand. We got 2-3 inches of that accumulated in our yard. Then it started snowing. I know some of the totals say the city got 6 inches, but when you live on the side of a hill, even a relatively small one, it gets much higher. The packed snow in tire tracks was at 2 inches, and a good part of that was the ice stuff, but on our street where there were no tire tracks it was much deeper.
And yes, we aren't planning on leaving the house this weekend except for church. The area doesn't plan on a thaw or stopping the wind from blowing the powdery stuff until Wednesday. It should be a fun week. At least its January in less than a week.
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