The Update

Did Jonathan fix everything like I had hoped? Did the car ever get unstuck? Many have asked me those questions, so here is my attemp to enlighten you all. I had called the neighbor to get Isabelle a ride home from school, and since the husband was still home, he volunteered to come help with the car. After hiking up the hill to retrieve the keys, he start fiddling with the car. After ten minutes, I see it move and I'm thinking, "hooray". And then all of a sudden it whipped right around and slid off the driveway and into the dip between our properties. Oh my. The neighbor calls me on his cell phone. I'm just glad he and the van are okay, but he is profusely apologetic for making things worse. He tells me not to worry, he'll get it out when his son gets home from school with their other truck (which has all of the towing gear in it). In the meantime, he goes back to his house, grabs his skidloader (Bobcat), and uses the scoop the break up all of the ice on our driveway and scoop it out of the way. At this point I'm thinking its a good thing the car is off to the side because it means he can clear the whole driveway. Hehe. And he truly did a great job with the clearing. And of course, now that means Jonathan can get up the driveway with his car. So we cozy up in the house and wait for Jonathan and the neighbor to save the car. Jonathan's first action upon getting home that afternoon was to run out and work on the the car. Um, nope. Actually, his first action was to grab the camera and start taking pictures of the beautiful ice on the trees. Shortly after, the neighbor's son got home and before Jonathan could even get down the hill to them, they already had our car out of the ditch and pulled all of the way up to our garage. Hooray for them! They are my heroes! So here is my next lesson learned from the experience. It is important to have good neighbors, and especially a good working relationship with them.

But, while I'm blogging, I have to tell you my next story. Last Monday (one week ago), There was a storm predicted in the evening so the girls' ballet class was canceled and Jonathan called me from work at 4 to tell me he was coming home. I expected he would be home by 4:30. When 5:00 came and went, I started getting really worried. Before that I could put the delay down to traffic, or slow going with ice out there or some such thing. By 5:15, I'm trying to find out if there were any traffic accidents on the freeway and looking up the phone numbers for the police station and hospitals. Just as I'm about to make my first phone call, there was a knock on the door. There is Jonathan, looking like the abominable snowman. I frantically greet him with relief pouring through me. It turns out everything was fine until he reached our dirt road. At which point there were a bunch of cars coming back from it. One stopped and told him not to go down the road. It was covered with 6 foot drifts, no snowplows were running on it, and there was already one car stuck in the first drift. So Jonathan turned around and debated whether to go to a nearby friend's house. But we had a special family evening scheduled for that night and he wanted to be there. So he drove a half mile down to a place that sells tractors and asked if he could park his car in their lot. The owner was wonderfully friendly and even gave Jonathan a lift back to the head of our road. Jonathan pulled out his gear from his car... He had sweatpants to throw on over his work slacks, his second best snowboots, his second best jacket, a hat, and his driving gloves (thanks Mom & Dad, he loves them). He starting hiking down the road. Sure enough there was the stuck car, blocking the entire road, and yep, a lot of very high drifts. He stayed warm enough during the almost 2 mile trek through the beginning of a snowstorm except his hands and face. He said the cold wouldn't have been bad except for the 20-30mph winds. His major regrets were the lack of snow gloves along with a balaclava and flashlight. Luckily, it wasn't quite dark yet, although it was getting there by the time he got home. I was proud of husband for having the forethought to put gear in his car, and for bravely making his way home to me. We did have a fun night that night (although he was pretty exhausted and kept falling sleep during it). We had previously heard about and decided to emulate a different family who does a traditional "pioneer night" once a month. Meaning, they would pretend there was no electricity and would instead cook and live by wood stove and candlight for the night. The kids loved it and had a blast, and I learned a lot of things I need to do to be more prepared in case we ever do lose power; which we haven't yet this winter, but it seems like a whole lot of other people are having that problem. (Sorry to Rebecca who lost power for a day, and Jonathan's coworker who lost it for 10 days).

I'll try to get some pics posted soon, but we've been redoing our computers (putting Windows 7 on in the hope they will play more nicely together, which still doesn't seem to be working) and it means that we haven't put the camera programs back on yet. So in the meantime you'll just have to make do with my verbose accounts of our doings. But I do have to say just in case anyone gets the wrong impressions, I LOVE IOWA!!!