ice and closures

Good morning! It has been one of "those" mornings and it is only 8:44am so far. The meteorologists kept saying there would be sleet this morning but I don't think anyone thought it would be as bad as it has been. There are wrecks everywhere! We watched for our county to close schools but the closure didn't come so we carried on with our normal school morning routine. As we, the kids and I, were headed out the back door my oldest daughter was first one out. As soon as she hit the steps she slid all the way down them stumbling for some balance because the steps were completely iced over, thank goodness she didn't fall. When we got in our vehicle I called Mr. B to ask why he didn't tell us the steps were iced over because he had been out to start my van for warming and to leave for work.

On our way to school everybody was driving very cautiously to keep from wrecking because there were patches of black ice on the roads. I didn't have a problem until I was dropping my middle child off at the middle school. When you pull in at the middle school you have to drive all the way around the back to the loop to drop students off, the speed limit through there is like 10MPH and I was going about 8MPH when I got on the back loop road, before I knew it I was going sideways. We didn't wreck or anything but it really worried me because some of those cars drive around there like the hounds of hell are on their back bumper and that kind of driving could really pose a problem. We decided that someone needed to go into the school and tell staff that the road had iced over but I was in my pj's still so it wasn't going to be me. Since my daughter goes to school there she decided that since we were early she would go tell them.

So far all schools around us have been closed but ours hasn't. None of the kids are really happy about this but the ice will be gone within two or three hours so I can understand why they aren't closing them. The problem is that we are having a rain/sleet mix. As soon as it hits the ground it is freezing. Our temps are supposed to start rising but as I was taking the kids to school we dropped from 30 degrees to 28 degrees according to the external temperature gage in my Chevy van, that gage is always right on the temp that the weather stations announce. I think that the school system should tell parents that if they are having problems getting their children to school due to the ice to wait a couple of hours and bring them and the tardy won't count against the kid. Mine are already there so I would feel better if they just kept them there since the ice will be gone in a matter of hours anyway. I say that because my kids ride the bus home each day and I don't like to think about my children on a bus going over icy roads also I don't like for my children to miss school unless they are terribly sick or weather conditions are such that it is basically impossible to get there, school is hard enough without having to make up tons of missed work.

So that is how my day has started off. Yesterday was my "FLOOR" day, the day I clean all of my floors and for once I had some help. With the kids being out of school my son stuck around home to help me yesterday. For some reason he LOVES to sweep and mop so I let him help me. I did have to go behind him and re-sweep in a couple of places but at least he was trying and when it comes to cleaning house I will take all of the help I can get.

My son is 10 now and in the past month he has just about ate us out of house and home. We can't keep the child in jeans. We just bought him 8 new pairs of jeans in December and he has already out grown them as far as length goes. When he puts them on it looks like he is waiting for a major flood to come whipping up..heehee! As you know he has severe ADHD, in May I took him off of his meds and he has done really well except for the past month so I think we are going to have to go back on the low dose Daytrana patch just to help him out a bit. His school work is starting to lack more than usual and so is his behavior. If anyone is familiar with ADHD then you know exactly what I am talking about. Since May I have incorporated more "natural" foods into his diet where as before I was making sure that he was eating healthy but those foods still weren't as clean (no chemicals) as those that the natural food stores offer. I will continue to keep up the natural foods but at the same time he needs a little something to help him through. The good thing about the Daytrana patch is that you can control how much goes in to his body.

Well, I need to sign off and get busy with my need-to-get-done list. Y'all have a beautiful day, stay warm and God Bless You!