Snow Day (with unrelated pics)

       As a kid, we lived for snow days, and the unexpected reprieve from routine.  I vaguely remember it occurring once or twice, and I vividly remember a day when I was in college where they should have called a snow day.  I lived at Old Farm apartments, at the bottom of the hill, and usually rode the shuttle bus up to class, but on this day, it wasn't running because of the snow, so I had to wade through the unshoveled walks, sliding backwards at least a step for every two I took.  We had a quiz in my English class, and the few of us who did show up tried to persuade our professor that it should either be cancelled or we should get extra credit for making it to class.  He was unfazed, and we took the quiz. 

      When I taught in Brigham City, and lived in Logan, there was many a day where Cache Valley was hit by a blizzard, and my carpool buddies and I crept fearfully through the canyon on snowy, icy roads.  Once we even passed a car who had flipped off the road and ended upside down - and it turned out to be the girl from our carpool who had driven herself that day, with her small daughter.  Luckily, everyone was okay.  And we always said a little please bless that on those snowy days, it was one of the drivers with either a 4 wheel drive, or a safe driver (we had one who was a little crazy one year - she was late one morning, and called saying that she was stuck on one of those giant piles of snow that the plows put at the end of streets.  None of us can figure out how that happened, but are just glad it happened before she picked us up!) Usually, the storm that had slammed Logan got stuck there, and Brigham had little or no snow, so there was rarely a chance for us to have snow days there.  One year though, we lucked out - two feet of snow fell overnight, and it hit all over Northern Utah, so there was no choice but to cancel everywhere.  It took my roommates and I hours to shovel our long driveway so we could even think about getting our cars out, but we enjoyed the day off nonetheless.  But I never expected to have a weather related day off in Dubai until...

In the middle of parent teacher conferences on Thursday, after about an hour of solid rain, we received the following:

Due to predicted weather conditions, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) has urged all schools to close today to ensure that children reach home safely.

Therefore, DAA is in the process of contacting all parents via SMS and email, asking them to pick up their children as soon as possible.  In PS and ES, parents will collect children directly from the classroom. (Will had regular class that day) Students who normally ride the bus will be sent home on their MORNING bus at 11:30 a.m.  PreK  and KG1 students will go on the same busses.

Word on the weather front was that a nasty storm had hit Saudi Arabia, and was on its way to Abu Dhabi, then Dubai, so we got an unexpected afternoon off!  Of course the storm didn't materialize, but we did get more rain overnight, and some thunder and lightning, then a little more rain on Friday and Saturday.  It is pretty exciting for everyone here to get any kind of weather outside sun and sandstorms.

Now for the unrelated pics:)

We started decorating for Christmas, and once Nate mentioned it to Will last Saturday morning, we had no peace until we had unearthed at least half of what he remembered, and got the tree put up with lights.  We have a few decorations on it, but have yet to get them all put up, however we did get out the  new Little People nativity, and it has been a hit!  Mary has gone missing once, but we found her under the couch, and the animals have migrated to the playroom with all their animal buddies.  Baby Jesus is MIA though, so wish us luck on that.

Happy Thanksgiving this week!