Sick Days, Snow Days

Thanks goodness January is over! I think we spent more time home than at school due to extremely cold weather and a 24-hour stomach bug. Lucky for me, I was the only one who didn't catch the bug and I got to take care of everyone who did, including being barfed on at the store. My kids did not attend school one full week the whole month!

We can also blame the weather for this. We set a record here for the most snow accumulation in MI ever on record! The first week back after winter break, we had temps below 0 with wind chills below 30! Most of the 5 days they cancelled school for weather was for "Arctic" days, not for snow, meaning it was too cold. Sometimes I was annoyed because I just drop my kids off somewhat close to the door and they won't have recess on those really cold days, so I figured, "what's the big deal?" Then I learned that the middle schoolers and high schoolers are at the bus stop at 6:30 am and have to walk a 1/4 of a mile or more to some of their classes, so I guess it's mostly for them. The U of M was actually cancelled one day, and they haven't cancelled classes for like 30 years! I learned one more thing that helped me get through the snow days: we have 6 of them, so we still have one more before we have to make any up! Does that mean that each year the kids get 6 extra days of school? They usually get 1 or 2 extra days off if the didn't have any snow days, but never 6!

This was taken before we got a few more inches piled on top. 

Kind of hard to see, but the white stuff is frost and ice.

You can see it better here. My sister took similar pics of her place in Iowa the last time the mid-west got slammed with a winter like this. Ice, inside!!

Here's the temp outside on this particular day, without the wind chill of course. Yikes!