ICE

Today I decided that it's official: I strongly, strongly dislike Illinois winters. Then spring and summer mean tornadoes, and summer is hot and muggy, so maybe fall is the only really good season in this state? I'll get to the weather in a minute, but first I wanted to say that I love Sidney's EIU shout-out! She looks great in her cool "I Love EIU" gear. I also loved all of the fairy princess pictures. Camden, Riley, and Sid are natural-born fairies. And, I loved seeing the little ghost at Magnolia Hill in South Carolina. I wish that Sarah, Joel, Eliza, and Greg could all come out to Utah for spring break! But I am SOOOOOOOOO excited to go home on Friday to see everybody!!! The little girls and I have a big sleepover planned for Friday night. They're my favorite sleepover buddies.

So, the weather. Last night it rained freezing rain all night, which makes it hard to sleep when it sounds like little pebbles are hitting your window, and it was extremely windy. I slept with every blanket I own on my bed, so I was nice and toasty warm, but it sounded so cold and nasty outside. When I woke up this morning, you couldn't really see out the windows of the apartment because there was a thick layer of ice on them. Dr. Small called us and canceled our architecture class due to weather concerns, but unfortunately I still had to head over to school to get things done before Mr. Riccio's class in the afternoon. You'd think that since they're married to each other, if one canceled class the other would follow, but they are very, very different. So I bundled up and went outside to clean Stryder off--and that was no easy job. It was like he had been vacuum sealed in a glass case. There was a solid sheet of ice that literally covered the whole car, and I had to hit the windows pretty hard to get the ice to crack. Once it cracked, it shattered like glass--it was so weird. Then at about 1:00 this afternoon it started to snow, and by the time I left school at about 7:00 p.m., there were probably close to five inches of snow on the ground--with a solid sheet of ice underneath. It took Aly and me a while to clean the car off again tonight when we left school, and then it was raining freezing rain again on the way home, so I couldn't really see out of the windshield because the water would instantly freeze.

Finally we made it home tonight, and I was able to enjoy some delicious chicken noodle soup that Sister Stowell made for me and brought over yesterday evening. She is so nice! We were supposed to have our weekly meeting tonight, but since we were all at school for class this afternoon, and people wanted to drive as little as possible, we had our meeting then. You can tell that things are getting kind of tense because Kristen and Catherine nearly had a smack-down at the meeting. Luckily we all worked things out, but I think everyone is a little grouchy--especially since Mr. Riccio and the Tarble Arts Center keep giving us different instructions about how they want the exhibit to look. I am really pooped tonight, so I'm off to bed. Hopefully it won't be so cold and nasty tomorrow!