10 Dec Cabin Fever in a Texas Ice Storm

We are several days into our Very Rare Winter Wonderland, here in Texas. The weather is freezing and several inches of ice still cover the ground. Here in Texas, it snows or ices so rarely that when it does, there are no resources to manage it. There are a few trucks with sand available for the roads, but at times like this, those are clearly inadequate, so everything literally shuts down. This includes stores, schools, places of business. The roads are eerily empty. Since I work in a hospital, I still have to make an effort to get there. Unfortunately, hospitals never close! It usually takes me one hour to get to my hospital. For the past couple of days, it has taken me three hours. It was pretty scary and unpleasant, but I managed to get there and home again.

Cabin Fever

Being confined to the house for the past few days has been a little rough on the kids. They are not happy when they can’t get outside. Unfortunately we don’t really have the proper clothing for this weather, which has limited our outdoor time. They are beginning to suffer from cabin fever, I believe… at least that’s what I’m going to blame it on! Even getting dressed this morning was an enormous challenge which I chose not to battle. I let Clark make all fashion decisions and this is how that turned out:

That’s his Dad’s work jacket, over his pajamas. Luci is wearing a dress that is about one size too small for her, and more appropriate for summer, but it’s over a pair of oversized sweat pants, so I let it go. He even added a matching headband.

The priority today was to get the kids outside to play once temperatures got within reasonable range. Because everything is still sheer ice, they both stepped outside and promptly fell flat. Clark was not amused; Luci thought it was hilarious. Either way, they figured out how to stay standing and ended up playing for about an hour.

More Cookies!

This time, they expected cookies when they came back inside. So we quickly whipped up my childhood favorite, Haystacks! They are super simple, super quick, and everyone loves them. I haven’t had them in years, but they were just as good as I remembered!

I caught a couple of sneaky little fingers that assured me that Clark and Luci loved them too.

Since there was no school today, I wanted to make sure Clark got something done for school today. He had a hard time concentrating today but we managed some Horizons Math and some Explode the Code.

Pushing through and getting school work done was difficult and frustrating today. It honestly made me wonder how I am going to have the patience to homeschool day after day once we are in this for good. I think it’s going to be important to remember that despite the difficult moments, he actually works very hard, has made so much progress. He is such a sweet little boy, and I am a very lucky Mom.