Soooo . . . regarding the post previous to this one . . .
Hoo boy, did I speak too soon.
The snowstorm last Sunday lasted forever & ever. Between the two storms, we ended up with some 15-20 inches of accumulation. That’s insane for Seattle. The city shut down.
The kids missed four more days of school.
Let’s just let that sit for a minute and sink in. FOUR MORE DAYS. And Midwinter Break is the following week! Everyone’s brains are turning to mush. By Thursday, even the teenagers were sick of missing school and complaining about the snow days.
I ventured out for groceries on Monday morning and had the place pretty much to myself — including a very full shelf full of milk! Mine, all mine!
(And then proceeded to go a little overkill on milk, buying an extra gallon every time I ventured outdoors. At one point we had six gallons stuffed in the fridge.)
Side and residential roads weren’t getting plowed at all. Getting the kids to piano lessons was a slip ‘n’ slide adventure, as was dropping off the boys at the church for YM activities.
We had a power outage late Tuesday evening — a branch fell on a line. The lights went out, and then we saw flares of blue light in the sky down by the transformer station. Crazy and eerie.
Best of all was this: Crista closed the portion of road that goes down the hill at the bottom of our street, which meant that we could sled on the street! I encouraged the kids to go sled as often as they could.
The only bad part was that Brian had to go on a business trip to Baltimore in the middle of the week, and missed Valentine’s Day. I still filled the children’s “heart stockings” with cards (Jeff got a big one with dancing, singing bacon) and we had our traditional “Fancy Meal” without him, but it wasn’t quite the same without Brian there.
But then — as a surprise, Brian suggested that he organize a night away without the children when he returned. He booked us a night in the Hotel Sorrento downtown, which is this beautifully restored 1920s building.
This was a place so Gatsby that they change the rugs in the elevator depending on the day of the week. Swank.
Plus, it has this amazing Fireside Room, perfect for curling up on couches and sipping ginger ale while talking for a very long time. (Which we did.)
The next day we had an awesome breakfast . . .
. . . and then walked around Pike Place Market, which we haven’t done for a while. And . . . eh. The market is so touristy. We immediately remembered why we haven’t done that in a while. (I admit it was fascinating to walk outside the market and look down on the empty Viaduct — so quiet now that it’s closed to traffic!)
We finished our day with a stroll up the hill to Salt & Straw — a different branch of the same ice cream chain I went to with my parents. We picked out a tasting flight of four different ice creams, and they were all delightful.
And now forward into Midwinter Break . . . another week with no school, bleh . . . so glad the snowpocalypse is over — and we survived!
Casa Camisas 