Hot Cocoa and Oodles of Noodles

SNOW DAYS. So growing up in New Hampshire I have wonderful memories of waking up on a snowy winter morning and gathering around the TV to watch the list of towns scroll by, hoping upon hoping that we would see "Amherst" in glowing letters on the screen.  We often had to sit for awhile, just catching Bedford, Concord and Dublin, cheering for Lancaster, Manchester, and New Boston, really biting our nails at Whitefield and Wilton, and triumphantly getting out the hot cocoa and oodles of noodles packets (for after the mandatory sledding adventure) as our town made the list... A SNOW DAY! Of course sometimes it was just a delayed opening but even then we could wear our pajamas a little bit longer, eat a leisurely breakfast, and look forward to that mixed-up sort of energy that school would have with a different schedule, slushy hallways and snow-fort building at recess. Now, as a grownup, I can appreciate the other, darker side to snow days: the need for childcare, transportation quandaries, making it to appointments on time, the massive amount of shoveling needed to clear the drive. But I confess, still to this day, the childhood glee of "Yee Ha, a snow day!!!" is my gut reaction for sure.

NO SNOW DAYS. Thus it was a bit of a blow to learn that up here in the great snowy state of Alaska, we have almost no snow days. It could dump several feet of snow overnight, and the plows, beater trucks and studded tires would be up and rolling by morning. Alaskans are just too hearty for their own good! However, late Sunday night, J's phone began to ring. The warm front and epic rain over the weekend had turned every road and parking lot into a massive, slush-lined puddle, and the temperatures were dropping again, so... AN ICE DAY! "Slick" doesn't even begin to describe it.

From the cover of the Anchorage Daily News (http://www.adn.com)