Tag Archives: snow days

Snow day: use it or lose it

Yesterday was our first school snow day of the year. I’m not sure why it was a snow day. There wasn’t a particularly large volume of snow. Maybe the school system needed to use up the days before they were lost to spring weather.

This meant I had to take a vacation day from work to stay home with the boys. I don’t like having to spend my vacation days in this manner. I prefer to save them up to use when everybody is in school and I can stay home alone. So far, I’ve only been able to do this once; it was pure bliss.

After breakfast, and a break for some light roughhousing, we used the morning to catch up on our reading and do some homework. Buster lags a little bit in reading. That’s why it amazed me how willing he was to help his little brother do his homework. Buster helped Big Man sound out words on his list like a professional tutor. He showed more patience than I did when Big Man hit a difficult patch. Maybe he’s supposed to be the teacher instead of the student.

In spite of all the attempted murders, they do care for each other.

After lunch, we went out and played in the snow. By this, I mean I shoveled while the boys frolicked. It was the least amount of snow I’ve know to close a school, so the shoveling wasn’t bad. I didn’t even get sore or feel the need to swear when the snowplow went by later and pushed the street snow back into our driveway. It just wasn’t swearing snow.

Pulling little brother.

The tables turned: Pulling is not a fun as big kids make it look.

In the end, it wasn’t a bad vacation day spent.

Today was worse. School was closed again. This was a mind-boggler to me. There was hardly any new snow, and the roads seemed fine.

Today was fort-building day, which keeps kids from murdering each other, but is kind of messy for a living room.

Fort Living Room. Established to protect the TV from marauding parents.

It helps that none of the garrison of this fort is very tall.

Meanwhile, I worked on our washing machine, which decided not to run at all. I got it to work, but not quite the way it’s supposed to work. I’m not sure how my wife will like my cobbling job. She may press for a new machine. This is going to be a hard battle to lose. It’s one of the those where you know the exact problem, but the machine was manufactured to prevent you from getting to it without breaking more parts.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings. The school still has a few snow days in the bank, so it might turn out to be too sunny for school in the morning.

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It’s Snowdaypalooza!

In the past couple weeks our schools have had at least seven snow days. It might have been more, but I lost count in the delirium of the cabin fever. Being housebound with three boys, preschool through 5th grade, felt like a bad episode of Big Brother at first. Then it began to feel like Lord of the Flies.

Our first two snow days were the result of an actual snow storm. When that got cleaned up, the Polar Vortex saw its chance to swoop down on us, giving us high temperatures in the neighborhood of -3° F (-19°C). I’m glad there’s now an official name for a good old-fashioned cold snap. Things are more dramatic when they have names that are capitalized. People might not understand closing school for an arctic blast, but having the Polar Vortex descend upon you is serious business.

That moment you realize the cold spell you see coming is actually the Polar Vortex.

After two days of keeping kids at home, the Vortex got bored and moved on. The temperatures rose to near freezing. Yay!

Ice storms. Boo!

The ice storms had names too, because that’s how storms roll these days. I don’t think it’s a good idea to name storms. It makes the storms competitive. Every storm wants to be remembered by name, so instead of just enjoying themselves and scooting through on the trade winds, they get as nasty as possible to leave their marks: “Winter Storm Gretchen was here! Boom! Two inches of ice! Power outages! Downed trees! Plus, I made you fall and bruise your ass! Won’t forget old Gretchen now will ya?”

I didn’t learn the names of the storms. I won’t play their games. My ass bruise will always be a nameless tragedy.

Anyway, our house shrunk to the size of chicken coop over the course of the innumerable snow days. At first, the boys were excited at having no school. They expressed their pleasure by running headlong into each other and executing other WWE maneuvers. They screeched for the sake of the noise and balked at any and all activities carrying the least stench of learning on them.

As time passed, they began to expect each coming day to be one with no school. Too often their expectations proved correct. The thrill of the surprise vacation waned. In their ennui they ran headlong into each other and executed other WWE maneuvers. Bored, they screeched for the sake of the noise. In their desperation to live free within their homebound world, they balked at any and all activities carrying the least stench of learning on them.

It got a little tiring, especially since I made them start each day with horrible school stuff like reading, spelling, and practicing the violin. The protests were loud and grating. But at noon we had a lunch fit for three kings to complain about, followed by an afternoon of parental surrender, tablet screens, and PlayStation.

Today we have school again. I deserve a vacation. Maybe going to work will seem like one.