After seven full days of being housebound by the never-before-seen amounts of snow that hit Seattle over the past week, we made it out of the house on Christmas Day.
On Christmas day, after one week and two slippery trips to the grocery store on foot pushing a jog stroller laden with groceries, we finally drove away from our house.
We slowly mae it down the still-treacherous side streets around our house, nearly sliding into parked cars several times as the car lurched to one side or other, seemingly with a mind of its own. White knuckle doesn't begin to cover the strength of my grip on the door handle and arm rest as J. gingerly maneuvered us forward.
The main arterials were better but still dicey in patches as we made our way to Ava's Granma and Papa's house for Christmas breakfast-turned-brunch due to everyone's difficulty in making the trip.
The noshing and abbreviated gift openings could be summed up like this:
"Hey, you made it!"
"Have some food."
"Have some food."
"Here Ava, open this."
"Uh, it's snowing harder. We have to go. Nice seeing everyone!"
In fact, within an hour of arriving, several of us turned right around to head back home because it started snowing again! It was the shortest, least festive Christmas of my life. It was just hard to get into the Christmas mood when everyone had one eye on the windows watching the weather conditions. Thankfully, warmer days and melting rain ahead mean things should get back to normal soon.
In a bit of revisionist history though, when my daughter grows up, she will remember Christmas '08 not as a sleep-deprived, runny nose-laden, frozen wasteland, but as the color-coordinated, Christmas card-worthy depiction shown below, taken a week before the snow came.
If nothing else, the snowstorm has accomplished something more than 30 years of Seattle winters had not: cured me of my inclination to complain about the rain. Compared to being trapped by snow, rain's not so bad at all anymore. See? This is the season of miracles.
