Thanksgiving Week - Snow and Food

On Sunday it started snowing. However it was light snow and was supposed to melt Monday morning. If I recall, there was snow on the ground that morning, but the roads were fine. I went to work with no problems. Throughout the morning it would spit snow, but it wasn't sticking. Robb called me later that morning to ask if I thought it would be safe for him to go to work. I said that of course he should go to work! That afternoon there was sunshine and not a drop of snow in sight. I had heard that the snow might start in the afternoon, but it looked fine outside; so I made the executive decision with my vanpool to leave at 5:00, instead of a little early like we had discussed that morning. I kid you not, at 4:45 it started snowing hard and sticking. Our commute home is normally 1.5 hours. That night it ended up being a tense 3 hours. The problem was the ice on the roads, covered by snow. There were car accidents upon car accidents. We sat on I-5 for a solid 30 minutes without moving at one point. We even saw a mini-snowman built in the median of the interstate because we had been sitting there for so long. We never went above 30 miles an hour the whole time. It was a scary, tense night. I feel bad complaining about my 3 hour commute though. Because when I got home and started watching the news I saw that commuters from Seattle were stuck in traffic that was much worse. I have friends who were stuck in buses for 8 hours. Some people got home at 3:00 in the morning. Cars were abandoned on the main roads. Buses got in accidents. It was an outrageous night, which was a combination of ice and snow showing up at rush hour, and Seattle's notorious problems for not being able to deal with snow. That night it took Robb about 3 hours to get home. The on-ramp he normally uses to get on the interstate when he leaves work had a nine-car pile up. He managed to use some side roads to avoid some of the traffic and hills. The next day we stayed home as the road in front of our house was a sheet of ice. In addition, after each of our exhausting commutes the night before, we felt we deserved a day off for relaxation.

The Snow Starts

Icy Neighborhood Road

We both went to work on Wednesday and then had Thursday off for Thanksgiving. It was nice to have a quiet Thanksgiving, just the two of us. We cooked a couple of items from scratch (like the turkey, my fried corn, and my amazing pumpkin pie), but most of the other food was pre-made this year. We decided since it was just us two we wanted to relax and not stress about cooking all day. We watched the Macy's Day Parade and then took a walk through the neighborhood, which still had quite a bit of snow on the ground. We decided to walk to a nearby gas station to pick up cheap beer (we use it to cook shrimp in for shrimp cocktail.) It really was a lovely morning for a stroll! We spent the rest of the day eating, watching Thanksgiving episodes of Friends (we own the whole series), Charlie Brown, and Garfield. And we decided that night to start a new tradition of watching the original Miracle on 34th Street. I love this movie and I think it's a great way to start the holiday season, especially since the movie starts with the Macy's parade! Robb took quite the nap during the movie, along with one of our fat cats - Malibu! It was so cute! And what a great holiday!

We've got a nice short trail through some woods in our neighborhood!