Winter Storm!

In my world, winter storm = four day weekend. Whoo hoo!

The festivities began Friday morning. After breakfast wih a friend Southern Man made a token appearance at work, cancelled his late-morning and afternoon classes (and presciently so, as the University ended up closing at noon), and headed back home for a morning of well-deserved R&R. Said morning didn't last long, as it turns out Southern Man's kids stayed home from school as well and he picked them up at noon instead of the usual five-ish. We made a sweep through a couple of stores (Wal-Mart, a bookstore...) and finally arrived at casa Southern Man mid-afternoon. Everyone immediately headed to their favorite corners (teen son and his XBox to TV #1, teen daughter and her "Charmed" DVDs to TV #2, and baby daughter to the PC for games) and Southern Man just bounced around happy as can be to have the kids around again. We headed back out into the ice and cold for dinner with Southern Man's gf and her daughters at El Chico, then spent the rest of the evening relaxing at home. Teen daughter finally broke in the new coffeepot and bean grinder that Southern Man picked up over Christmas break and was seldom far from coffee for the rest of the weekend. The only down side was that baby daughter was a bit sick and needed lots of attention and TLC. Southern Man was of course happy to oblige.

Next morning all slept in. Baby daughter was still feeling a bit peaked but Southern Man was still able to sneak out a few times - a solo breakfast run to McDonalds, a trip to the local music store with teen daughter, and a trip to Old Navy and the mall with teen son. Southern Man picked up a couple pair of jeans for himself and one for teen son for 75% off! How often do you get out of Old Navy with three pairs of jeans for $30? The roads were pretty bad but Southern Man's creaky old Explorer had little difficulty navigating the icy terrain. Southern Man and baby daughter spent most of the rest of the afternoon in front of the fireplace burning his backlog of junk mail one piece at a time, which was a lot of fun. The evening entertainment was bowling, of all things, again with Southern Man's gf and her daughters. All of the kids seemed to have a good time, which was pretty much the point of that particular adventure.

Now all are back in their favorite spots for the evening. Due to the ice storm there's no church tomorrow, so they'll get delivered back to their mom at noonish. Southern Man is scheduled to work at the tax office Sunday afternoon and all stinkin' day Monday (no school Monday, it's the Martin Luther King holiday) but he hopes to skip out on most of that. The tax-prep business has been slow, slow, sloooooow but Southern Man has been assured that this will change rather dramatically in a week or so. Here's hoping for some quality time with gf on Sunday, which will beat the heck out of sitting in that client-free tax office trading lies with the other preparers. And hoping that the tax prep business does in fact make him some money here in the near future...