The Holiday Blizzard of 2006

Can you believe that blazingly creative name the local media came up with to describe the last two days of white misery we've been dealing with here in Colorado? Well, I guess it is the mainstream media after all. Perhaps they need to conserve their creative energy to come up with new and inventive ways to harass and irritate conservatives around the state.

ANYWAY, we have been snowbound for two days thanks to an enormous blizzard that hit the entire eastern half of Colorado Wednesday (yesterday) morning. Here in Greeley we had 20.7 inches of snow, the smallest amount to fall in front range towns. Thankfully, Katelynn and Nikki made it home safely on Tuesday evening with all their finals completed for the semester. 24 hours later Boulder was engulfed by 33 inches of the white stuff. Many of Nikki's friends ended up stranded in the dorm, unable to get out of Boulder much less DIA. Sadly some of them won't be able to get a flight home until Christmas morning, but at least they were able to reschedule something. But as for our family, we had all day yesterday with not a care in the world but to enjoy some Christmas movies in front of the fireplace as we munched on Christmas cookies and watched the snow pile up against the patio door. It was great.

Today, reality set in when we decided it would be necessary to shovel our way out if we wanted to go anywhere in the next five days. Jeff, Katy and Nikki spent around 5 hours with two snow shovels and a wheelbarrow clearing 3 foot drifts from our enormous driveway and front porch. Mara spent those same 5 hours climbing snow drifts in the yard and convincing Katelynn to take her for rides on her sled down the middle of the street. She had lots of fun; the others, not so much. I helped a very little bit and then begged off. After all, we only had 2 shovels.

Much to our surprise, about 4:30 a city snow plow found it's way back into these far reaches of civilization to run one swipe along the street in front of our house. So back out Jeff went to shovel a car's width from the sidewalk to the narrow path in the middle of the street. This was much faster than the rest of the job and by 6 he was out checking out the streets of Greeley in the van. By 8 he was out picking up a pizza for dinner. And thus, normal life resumes after the Holiday Blizzard of 2006.

There was one sad casualty of the blizzard for our family and that was the Leed's School of Business graduation ceremony we had planned to be attending this evening. We were all disappointed, especially Katelynn, but CU cancelled all events to be held today. Fortunately, they will still be holding the full University graduation tomorrow and have delayed that so we don't need to be in Boulder until 12:15, as opposed to the original 8:45 a.m. It won't be as personal as we won't get to hear Katelynn's name called or see her walk across the stage for her diploma, but at least she gets the chance to wear her cap and gown and make graduation official.

Well, looks like we have time for one more movie tonight before we head off to bed. All in all the blizzard was a good thing for us, providing two days of uninterrupted family time to get reacquainted after a long, busy semester.