Prayers & Snow

First of all, I'd like to request some prayers from my friends and extended family members, who might not know yet, for my mom, whose appendics ruptured and who had to have emergency surgery last night. Seems like she's OK, but she's been out of it and I have only been able to say a few words to her over the phone.

My dad and sister went down to south Louisiana late last night to be with her. My brother is going down tomorrow from NC, and the kids and I will head down this coming weekend to stay at least two weeks with her. We'll all going to be tag-teaming our trips, so it's not like we're all going to be there at the same time. Looks like she could be in the hospital for at least a week, and I'm sure she's going to need lots of help just moving around once she gets home. I'll be spending this week preparing for the trip and getting things done around here. It will not be an easy trip, as Mikel won't be there to give me a break with the kids, but I'm happy to be in a position to be able to spend lots of time helping out my mom.

The cold forecast I wrote about didn't disappoint. I think it's supposed to be something like -9 tonight, not counting the wind chill factor. At least that's what I heard on the radio when I was out buying a sled for the children this afternoon. I think tomorrow's high during the day just might get up to 4, though the radio said 0.

So, after some warm temperatures that finally melted the good amount of snow we'd gotten well before Christmas, we finally have some significant powder. I don't even know how much is out there. I mean, it's not in the feet or anything.

I guess we should have anticipated that it might snow here in the Black Hills this winter, and that we might like to let the children go sledding on our downwardly sloped back yard. I had to visit three stores to find a sled, and this one ended up not getting much speed. But I guess that's OK and safer since the children are so young. Anna has been sledding before at her schoolyard. Alexander never has and loved it as we knew he would. Anna kept falling off the back and got frustrated. It seemed she didn't know how to use her stomach muscles to keep herself sitting up. Alexander kept asking for more, and didn't care about that he might have fallen off. That was part of his fun.