Snow My God!

What a weekend. Honestly. I don't even know if I can put it all into words, but I'm going to do my best!

Basically, we just survived the worst blizzard since our famed 1991 "Halloween" blizzard. And let's see in 1991 I was only nine, so yeah, didn't have to really deal with the issues such a storm can cause. So anyway, let's rewind a bit.

Friday night we had a rehearsal with Praise Project and our director was smart enough to call the church we were scheduled to sing at and see if we could set up our equipment on Friday night so we would not have to deal with it in the snow. So after a super short rehearsal, we drove the drums down, set them up and that was that. Stopped to have a beer at Barley Johns and it was just starting to snow when we headed home around 11. It wasn't too bad yet.

Saturday morning I got myself up early enough so I could go and feed my parents cat since they were due in around 3:00. And I looked outside and sure enough, there was already a good seven inches on the ground. Fortunately my CRV gets through just about anything, so I got down to their house with no problem and even made it over to Caribou on my way back also without much problem.

We headed out to start shoveling around noon, even though the plows hadn't been through yet. We wanted to make less work for later. Meanwhile, I was checking the reports and checking in with my parents to find out how delayed they'd be. First they were told an hour and a half, then they were told three hours. My sister-in-law's flight ended up cancelled. When the airport closed here, I figured my parents weren't getting here either, though they kept reporting just a delay.

We finished our shoveling and took showers and got dressed to go to Praise Project. It was just down in Northeast Minneapolis, so I figured a half hour would be plenty of time to get there...except then just as we stepped out the door, the plows decided to come by. And bury us in a three foot plow ridge. There may have been profanities coming out of my mouth at that point.

So, I called our director and told her we'd be late, while Nate attacked the plow ridge enough that we could at least get my car out. We were tempted to just stay home - but since the drums were there, we kind of wanted to go down and get them.

Driving down there I've never been so scared in my entire life. The wind had really picked up at this point and it was true white out. I have never driven with such bad visibility. We went up and over a railroad bridge where it was very open and it was just very scary. Nate was ready to talk me into turning around, but once we got past that point and into an area with a lot of buildings, we were a little more protected.

Fortunately the church parking lot was plowed out really well. We got in just in time for the second prelude. There were two people sitting in the entire church. By the time mass started, there were six people in church, one priest, one acolyte, one reader. And then there were nine of us in the group - so a grand total of 18 people. It was odd.

Going home was much better, the roads were still pretty yucky, but the visibility had improved. I still hadn't heard from my parents again, so figured it was a good idea to go and feed the cat just so she had some food in case they didn't get home until three in the morning or something. We got to their house and I felt so bad - their driveway was a nightmare. And if we had tried to clean it out for them we would've been there until midnight. My mom had previously told me earlier in the day to not worry about it, just make sure the cat had food, so I just trudged up the driveway to get into the house, fed her and we made our trek back home. Now we were seeing all the idiots out on the roads and that made the drive both frustrating, but semi entertaining.

We finally made it home and decided to just make grilled cheese sandwiches and drink beer for dinner. I am not ashamed of our choice! It was a tough day, that beer was well deserved. And definitely helped ease the aches and pains a bit from shoveling. We settled in with some television shows and the phone rang at 6:30. I was shocked when it was my dad on the other end saying they had just landed! I warned him of the roads and what to expect when they got to their house. I was so surprised they made it, it was only about three hours late, not bad all things considered.

My sister in law was not so lucky, she had to spend the night in Atlanta. She made it home late yesterday from what I understand.

Sunday we slept in and then got up and attacked the driveway again. It went much faster and easier without the snow blowing and falling as we worked. We seriously have no more places to put any snow. Backing in and out of the driveway will be a challenge for awhile and I can't believe we didn't bury the lightpost - it's close, but not quite buried. After that I showered and then headed to my mom and dad's to catch up with them and hear all the stories of the trip. Sounds like traveling with 17 other people is an experience to say the least. But they did have a good time.

We finished out our weekend by grocery shopping and grabbing a bite at La Casita and then just crashing.

I had so many other things I wanted to get done this weekend - namely Christmas shopping - and feel like I'm SO behind on Christmas in general right now. I know it will all come together, but I am not as organized as I should be at this point. Hopefully having my mom back now should help and if it just would stop snowing on the weekends, we should be able to get a bunch of stuff done next weekend. Just going to have to be uber efficient!

So that is my story. Hopefully all my other MN friends survived Snowmegeddon just fine as well!