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The view outside my door at 10:30 a.m. when all kids would still be in school for over an hour.
My children have been home from school like most kids since December 20, 2013. Now I know some places already don’t go back to school until January 6, but here that is not the case. All of my children were scheduled to return to school today. And then it began snowing last night. Schools were even closing in the area. This is quite an impressive storm really. I mean it’s no 3 foot blizzard like we had last winter which kept my kids home from school for the week before their February vacation giving them a 2 week long break in February. But it’s impressive in that it’s not supposed to stop snowing here until tomorrow afternoon. It’s going to be on and off today and light at times and then pick up tonight into tomorrow morning they say and all told we’re supposed to get a mere 5 – 10 inches of snow in this 2 day time frame. That’s what impresses me, the length of this storm and it’s not even going to produce a foot of snow.
But it’s bitterly cold out there and when I got up at 5 this morning to start our back to school routine I was watching and waiting to see what our schools would do. Well, at 5:30 our town called an early dismissal for the day. My middle daughter’s school has called for nothing and transportation is a little more difficult for her because they have to follow all of these different towns decisions. So now I’m wondering does the bus pick her up early because our town gets out early? Does she stay all day? Will her school call for an early release later in the day leaving me unable to pick her up because my husband takes the car to work today?
And then I’m looking at my road. And I’m looking at the temperature and I’m thinking I just can’t do it. Her school is 20 miles from our home. Half an hour drive on a good day. I’m supposed to put her on a bus in this? If she was closer to home I might feel different.
So I declared it a snow day in our house. Sure I could send the other two to school, but I have a late morning meeting and my son’s bus would conceivably get here right in the middle of my meeting. Then my oldest daughter would be getting out of school at just about the time my son would be arriving home and I didn’t want her walking up all of those hills and risking herself out there with drivers on slick roads. I can’t be two places at once though and I definitely have to be here when my son gets off the bus.
So yes, because of all of that I extended our vacation. There’s a distinct possibility that they’ll all be home again tomorrow which means as of right now I will have all of the kids home with me until January 6. That’s not so bad though. I like having my kids here and I certainly prefer them to be safe. I know the powers that be at schools make the best decisions they possibly can with the information they have, but sometimes as a mother I think we have to make these sort of calls for ourselves. Perhaps if things were different and my 11 year old wasn’t in a school so far from home, I didn’t have a meeting today, my son and oldest daughter weren’t getting out at such close times making it impossible for me to be two places at once, or even if we had 2 vehicles the choice would have been different. But I’m afraid all of this outweighs any excessive bickering that might be happening around here because everyone is getting sick of looking at one another or they’re getting cabin fever.
Would you have kept your kids home for one more day with all of these forces at work even if it meant 2 plus weeks of the kids home?
