Wisconsin Cold

Braden sure does love his brother! He is very excited when they can look alike. He found this "woof-woof" hat in the drawer of winter clothes. It was huge on him, so I had to do some altering. When I told him to get ready to go this morning, he ran and grabbed it and then sat down on the floor beside Dylon. "Cheese!" What a great memory.

We are all surviving the bitter cold. Sunday we had quite the adventure. We woke up to rain around 5:30am. When we left for church at 8:00, the roads were slick and slushy, but we drove slowly and made it to church fine. With the ground still frozen, there was standing water all over the place. They even had to block off part of the parking lot and one entrance at church because of the water. Driving home, the roads were even worse. Once again, slow and steady and we made it safely home. Well, almost home. We pulled into the driveway, but lost momentum and had to slide back out. Chad tried to get up enough speed again, but we only made it part way up the drive. We have a slight incline on the driveway, but you would have thought it was a mountain for as much trouble as we had. The van kept sliding back and turning to the side everytime we tried to move forward. Chad and I got out of the van and almost fell flat. The driveway was a complete sheet of ice. It was almost comical. We couldn't even walk. We just slid backwards down the driveway. Everytime we thought we were making an inch of progress, we ended up going back a foot! The ice was so thick that the snowshovel didn't even make a dent. We tried salt - but no luck. We tried to get sand - but it was frozen in the sandbox. We tried birdseed (hey, we had it in the garage and thought it might give traction! :) - again, no success. After almost 45 minutes of struggling, our neighbor finally came over and the guys CAREFULLY pushed while I drove the van into the garage. They were able to give just enough push that the van gripped onto the birdseed and we made it up the driveway! Within a couple hours, the temperature and weather had changed enough that the driveway was fine. You'd never know that there had been a problem. At the time, it was quite frustrating. But now, it makes us laugh and is a fun story to share.