Christmas Season - part IV

Our flights home went very smoothly, though it did take us close to an hour to get our luggage claimed at Dulles.

Before we left Kansas, we finished writing notes on all our Christmas letters. We left a stack to be mailed, so hopefully they got off very shortly after we left.

Our time in Kansas was very relaxing—sleeping in almost every morning, getting a few things accomplished around the house (largely essentials like meals and laundry), talking with family and friends. I didn’t get to visit with G’ma Gates as often as I would’ve liked, but I did get to visit her a couple of times besides Christmas day.

On Saturday, there was a snow with blizzard (or at least blizzard-like) conditions. The rural mail carriers all quit their routes and headed home before noon, as they encountered white-out conditions, got stuck, or simply were having to get out of the vehicle to clear the ice from the wipers and windshield every 15-20 minutes. It could take 20 minutes to drive 4 miles on the highway back to Anthony, 3.5 hours to drive the 60 miles to Wichita, or maybe one wouldn’t make it—ending up in an accident with another vehicle when neither could see the center line. Lots of blowing snow everywhere.

The snow cleared by mid-afternoon, so we headed over to the church to clear the sidewalks. In the front of our church, there’s a row of parking along the road with the sidewalk between the parking and a 3’ retaining wall. The biggest part of our shoveling job was right there. The parking lot had almost no snow, as it had been blown onto the sidewalk and was drifted up to the top of the retaining wall.

After final exams at Sterling the previous week, SR had flown down to Dallas to visit the family she had nannied for a couple of years ago. SR and D had planned to drive back on Saturday, but due to the predicted snow, they decided not to drive up until Sunday morning. As SC’s plane was coming in around noon, they drove straight to Wichita. D dropped SR off with her boyfriend’s family so they could spend a day together. D picked up SC at the airport and came home. SC had a delay in his flights, so he was a couple hours later arriving than scheduled, but he made it!

SR’s boyfriend brought her down to Anthony for lunch on Monday and spent the afternoon with us. That was the first time that JM, and I were able to meet him. The afternoon included a round of caroling to neighbors and friends. We made stops at close to 10 different homes!