Weekending- The weather outside was frightful

I feel like the word “cozy” gets thrown around a lot (by myself included 🤗) but that is exactly what this weekend was with plans being canceled due to a one two punch of a snowstorm and frigid temperatures. 

Linking up with Holly and Sarah for Hello Monday:

Friday´s two hour school delay was symbolic for the rest of the weekend- things were going to be different due to the weather... We only had about an inch and a half of snow on the ground Friday morning- the delay was pretty lucky all things considered. I was determined to make good use of the delay and so I got to work wrapping presents. 

From this...

Festive but frustrating- this tape drove me crazy as I spent about fifteen minutes trying to find where it began.

.... to this: I got these wrapped though not completely prettied yet as they didn´t have bows or tags on them. 

From school, I went straight to Aldi to grocery shop for the first time in weeks! I enjoyed the break from the grocery store and somewhat the challenge of making meals with what we had on hand but it was getting ridiculous and Abby was driving up from Tennessee and bringing a friend home for dinner. Living somewhat non-conventional was mostly fun and games but that ended when we needed to appear somewhat normal for a guest 😀. Abby asked if she and her friend could have dinner at the house (they are both trying not to spend money if they don´t have to and didn´t want to pay for food on the road which I appreciate). 

As the refrigerator was getting bare from us eating the contents of it, I noticed that it needed to be cleaned badly. So Friday, I cleaned the shelves before I put the items that I bought at the store on them. I had items on the top shelf and in the drawers but three shelves were bare.

While I cleaned the refrigerator, I placed the items that needed refrigerated outside on the patio knowing that they´d stay nice and cool.

I thought about making a meal for Abby and her friend but... that would require me making a meal (😆) and it´s always hit or miss when it comes to eating other people´s food. If Abby´s friend didn´t like what I made, it would be awkward so I decided to buy prepackead items for the girls and some already made lasagna for us. The girls would be arriving after we ate so it worked out for them to eat something different. I bought the girls each a soup, salad and wrap and let them decide what they wanted to eat. 

Then I set about to make the house look festive while I waited on Abby and her friend to arrive.

I wish I´d taken a picture of Abby and her friend before her friend left but I didn´t. Abby´s friend is one that Abby made at Miami. Her friend is not finished with school; she transferred to a college in Tennessee and the girls have gotten together this fall. Her friend doesn´t have a car on campus and mentioned what a long drive it would be for her parents to get her in TN as her parents live in northern Ohio. Abby insisted on picking her friend up from her school (a two hour drive for Abby) and bringing her to our house so that her friend´s parents would only have to drive to us to get their daughter, not all the way to TN. Her friend´s parents came to get her after she´d been at our house for a couple of hours. 

Saturday morning, Abby got up early and left the house by 4:30 AM to head to Michigan for one of her good friend´s bachelorette get together. It was at a rented house on a lake and the girls took a hike (and cold one!) and did crafts. It sounds like it was a lot of fun...

Meanwhile, in Ohio, we were sitting around waiting for the storm. There was a 100% chance of snow. The only issue was how much we´d get.

We had tickets to go to the University of Dayton basketball game in the evening with friends and we were really looking forward to it. Obi Toppin was getting inducted into the UD Hall of Fame. While he´s not a household name, those who root for the Indiana Pacers likely know who he is. We watched almost all of the Pacers´ playoff games this spring (they made it to the finals) and Obi is a player on the Pacers.

Our friends had to bale on us- kinda a long story but their daughter was working and they were worried she´d get off work early due to the storm. They had someone lined up who said they´d pick up their daughter but then when the snow started, that person didn´t feel comfortable driving in the snow so our friends said they needed to be at home to get their daughter. They were bummed too because they were looking forward to the game. The storm 1- us 0.

Snow started falling by 11:00 am on Saturday and continued all afternoon. Donnie and I left for the game with plenty of time to spare. We planned to eat at a restaurant near the stadium that we´d never eaten at. The roads were really bad and we zig and zagged on the ice at the first turn out of our neighborhood. We got to the entrance ramp to the interstate that would take us to Dayton, and we noticed that there was a back up of cars. Two cars had slid off the road, near each other but on opposite sides of the ramp. The weird thing is that one of the cars in the line, the first car, refused to drive through the vehicles (it looked like there was plenty of space?) and so cars had begun to pile up behind the car that wouldn´t proceed. Maybe something was on the road that we couldn´t see? Anyway, we had enough space to get off of the ramp and that´s what we did. We drove further away from the ramp and then circled back to see if traffic was moving on the ramp. It wasn´t. At this point, we could have driven further north on non interstate roads and then gotten on the interstate further north. But with the roads being as bad as they were, we decided to just go home. Well, we got dinner at a restaurant and dessert and then we went home. The storm 2-us 0.

Take out pizza from Roma´s- so good!

We settled in for an evening at home and we watched a pretty dumb, albeit marginally entertaining (enough to keep watching), Christmas movie.  At some point in the evening we received  a text from our church. Services were canceled for Sunday. The storm 3- us 0.

Sunday morning held frigid temperatures- -1 with a feel like temperature of -16 and no internet due to the storm. 

We had to go out and shovel- we´d gotten about six inches of snow but we waited until it warmed up to five or so degrees. We spent the day at home for the most part but we did have to go to Sam´s Club because Donnie needed to get pop and water for his office (staff gets free pop- I love this perk but Donnie is now the firm pop buyer and it seems we are often running out to Sam´s to get pop :)). Sam´s Club was the least busy I´ve ever seen it on a weekend! Donnie never goes to Sam´s during weekdays (he takes few week days off and when he does, trips to Sam´s Club do not make the cut!) and so he´s only there on the weekends when it tends to be super crowded. On Sunday, we were able to walk down the aisles of the store without throngs of people and their laden with things carts. I´m going to give us a point on this- the weather helped us so- the storm 3, us 1. 

Abby arrived home from Michigan late Sunday afternoon and we decided to get dinner to go from a place in town that we all like. I do plan to cook- Monday in fact and I realized that I needed an ingredient for Monday´s meal so volunteered to pick up our food for dinner and to run into a grocery store first to get the item that I needed. I saw a student from the junior high at the store who greeted me very sweetly and then went on to exclaim how great it was that we didn´t have school on Monday. I was like, ¨What? There´s no school tomorrow?¨ The girl´s mom confirmed that she´d just received an auto call from the school. School had been called off for Monday! Since I´m not on staff, I´d not received any communication from the school. I´d assumed we´d have a two hour delay due to the cold but didn´t necessarily anticipate the whole day off. Well, no complaints from me! Now, subs don´t get paid when we don´t work (I believe that all school staff does get paid) so the Rineer family coffers will have less $$ in them due to me not working on Monday. But not much less money since sub pay is not good in the first place... I´m calling this a win for me so the storm 3, us 2.   

We hung out at home in the evening, watching football, reading, and enjoying spending time together. It ended up being a good weekend despite missing out on some events that we´d hope would happen.