Weekly Wrap Up - Veteran's Day and Ice

On Saturday, the girls and I walked downtown to attend our city Veteran's Day Parade.   It was a short parade, but worth standing in the cold for.    Lindsey had an herbal medicine workshop at the museum in the afternoon, and then it was home for a leisurely evening at home.

Sunday was a pretty typical day.  Lindsey ran the sound booth in first service at church, I worked at the Haiti missions table and Olivia worked the youth table.  The husband had to work again, so he missed both services.  The evening was quiet and relaxed, with a big home cooked dinner and nowhere to be.

Monday morning the girls and I were up early to make the several hour trek to Bedford, Virginia to go to the National D-Day Memorial for a field trip.   This was a great experience, and my history love was thrilled to get to be there.  At the end of the ceremony, it began to rain a bit (and it was cold too).  Olivia stood in line for 30 minutes, in heavy rain to get to shake the hands of every single Veteran there.   She has a great respect for our military, flag and country that goes beyond her years.

In the evening we had our monthly 4-H meeting.  The kids all received the project books they ordered and we began working with them on those.   Olivia picked an animal science project book that is VERY deep, and Lindsey is working on a quilting project book.

Tuesday was a typical school day.  I ran downtown to do a couple of holiday errands while the girls worked on their lessons.   There's something about going downtown in the cold that makes me feel so Christmasy....even if it's only to pay our personal property taxes.  In the evening my brother came for dinner and then we all went to view the premier of a documentary called Evolution of America: 1619 to Today.  There were some good tidbits of information in it, but it was completely done from a liberal slant that quite honestly misrepresented some things.   It did make for interesting conversation on the way home.

Wednesday we worked on lessons and I did a few final preparations for the impending ice storm that was supposed to start in the evening/overnight.   I made a preemptive run to the store and picked up the few things that were on my shopping list for Friday, just in case the forecast is real, and then it was life as usual, with dinner and church services in the evening.

Thursday morning around 5am, the ice storm started.   I have to admit, I didn't think it would be an event due to all the horribly wrong weather forecasts we've had over recent months.   The husband left for work 90 minutes early to get ahead of the ice and bad travel conditions.  By 11am, temperatures were still at 31 with sleet, snow and freezing rain coming down all at once.   Lindsey finished up her 1st semester science class (God's Design for Science:  Weather and Water).  I spent the afternoon creating a notebooking journal from online resources for her second semester class (Apologia Anatomy & Physiology).   Lindsey spent the afternoon sewing and working on some Christmas projects.   Olivia has an art assignment to create a watercolor painting of her pet, so she used a photo she took recently and painted him sleeping.

The afternoon was a bit unnerving as we waited for my husband to make the trek home from work in the ice.  It's normally a 15 minute drive for him, it took close to 45 minutes to get home.   There were lots of power outages in our area (34,000 and growing), but thankfully ours only flickered.   We spent the evening playing board games and laughing hysterically.

Friday morning we awoke early to even worse conditions, and you could hear trees breaking.  The husband made the trek to work only to get there and find they were out of power and were closed for the day...a little announcement on tv/radio would have been nice ya'll.  He had to bypass downed trees going and coming, but made it home safely.   Lindsey's museum was also closed for the second day in a row, and our homeschool group bonfire for tonight was cancelled as well.   Once daybreak arrives we'll be able to  assess our trees for damage.

Have a great weekend, stay warm!