WOW – what a wild couple of days it’s been.
It all started on December 24th – pre Christmas Eve with us Oklahomans hearing we may have bad weather coming in. Most Okies just went yeah yeah, ok, let’s see what happens. We heard anywhere from 1 inch of snow to over 15 inches. I would say most of us were betting on 1inch.
Craig and I had to work on Christmas Eve, actually sort of a tradition. Craig was suppose to work 8 am til 6 pm, I was to work noon till past 10 pm. At abotu 7 am, I started hearing the pelting of sleet on our windows in the bedroom. At about 830, the noise wasn’t stopping, got up, called Craig, he said he made it to work but that the roads were getting bad. I looked outside and KNEW, this isn’t good.
I called work at 830 am. Gotta love my boss Dan. He knows I live out in the country with hills, I asked him about the conditions and he said he would bring me home that evening if i got stuck. We both agreed to watch the conditions and make our mind up closer to my arrival time.
On top of all of this, my mom was on vacation and was in Florida. I already had one of her dogs at our house but because of the ice, our dog sitter and I had agreed I would get the other dogs and bring them to my house. So, at about 930 am, i drove down the street to get them, only to be able to NOT pull up her drive due to the ice. I did get the dogs from her house, so we now had 11 dogs at our place – talk about a zoo.
By 10 after watching the TV, with everyone saying DON’T drive, I made the call back to work and said I wasn’t going to risk coming in. I wasn’t the only one calling in and I really appreciated my boss understanding – boy did I ever make the right decision.
We were also having power outages. Craig got hold of our neighbor and i went over and got a bunch of wood from them to help keep our house warm. It was sleeting hard, two girls trying to pile wet wood in the van, then I broke down a dog crate and used that and my dog dolly to get the wood in the house. But at least we had wood – fortunately by afternoon the power outages had stopped.
By noon the sleet was turning to snow and the wind kicked it up a notch. I just had the news on and it kept talking about get off the roads, too many accidents, State of Emergency. Was in contact with Craig and they had decided to shut down early, he was on the way home by two.
On the way home – - – well by 3 pm all major highways in the state of Oklahoma were shut down. Craig wasn’t home yet, I had heard from him once but chose not to call him because I didn’t want to cause an accident. There is no way to get to our house from Norman without getting on an highway and i prayed he was safely almost home. He did get home at 330 pm, it took him over 90 minutes when it normally takes 20 minutes. But, he made it safe and sound.
We sat and watched the snow continue until after dark. Dogs in and out and in and out and snow and wind and cold….. The State of Oklahoma was frozen solid by a record BLIZZARD!
We woke up Christmas morning to a beautiful white snowscape, sun shining, absolutely lovely day! We took tons of pictures of all the dogs enjoying the snow, built a snow-cardi! Santa brought us Xmas gifts, a bread maker for Craig and the Twilight series for me. In the afternoon Craigs buddies Myles and Tracy had the guts to drive out to our house and the 4 of us had a great Christmas dinner and movie marathon. The roads quickly melted where there weren’t snow drifts.
This morning/afternoon our ground is still covered in snow with the roads clearing more and more. The dogs are all having fun going in and out and we are just relaxing, in hibernation mode!
Christmas was truly a wonderful day and the down time was much needed. Oklahoma is slowly getting out of this weather mess but it was so much fun!
