The weather outside is frightful, but we hope the wedding’s delightful!

Right now Brad and I should be at the wedding reception of our dear friend Sarah, but instead we’re sitting in his parent’s living room by a roaring fire. Here’s how we ended up there instead of Durham.

4:00 Friday afternoon – Sweet Freedom! School’s out for the holidays and I’m headed home to enjoy two weeks of vacation from teaching. Brad and I plan to throw a few things in a bag, hop in the car, and drive to Lake Gaston to spend the night with his Maw Maw. In the morning we’re going to head down to Durham for the wedding. The forecast is calling for a pretty significant snow storm, but we’ll be headed south of the storm and should miss it by a few hours.

4:20 Friday afternoon – a few flakes of snow begin to fall. This is earlier than expected, but the flakes are very light. I’m not too worried because the temperature is above freezing.

4:45 Friday afternoon – I arrive home, rush in the house, and gather everything we’ll need for the trip. The snow is coming down faster, but it’s still very light.

5:15 Friday evening – Brad starts the car and we head out, noting that a white dusting has covered the driveway since I arrived home.

5:30 Friday evening – After a brief stop for gas, we hit the interstate, confident that the salt put down earlier in the day will make the road conditions just fine.

5:35 Friday evening – The snow is coming down quite heavily and the roads are already rough. It does not appear that the salt is doing diddly squat.

6:15 Friday evening – We’ve crawled far enough east to merge onto another interstate heading south. I am starting to get a not good feeling in the pit of my stomach.

6:30 Friday evening – We’re still over an hour and a half from Maw Maw’s house, under the best of driving conditions. A van in front of us is sliding all over the road and we seriously doubt the wisdom of continuing this trip. If we turn around, it will take us at least an hour to get back home, but we are only a few miles from Brad’s parents.
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We decided to spend the night at the in-law’s and reevaluate the situation in the morning. At 7:00 this morning we woke up to this:

Brad cleared the snow off our little car, but the neighborhood roads looked like this:

(this is the backyard, but the street looks pretty much the same).Nine inches of the white stuff as of nine this morning, and it is still snowing. So, we are staying put by this

And wishing this sweet and beautiful couple a very merry winter wedding and a wonderful life together.

Congrats to the new Mr. and Mrs. and to all a good night!

<3
Hattie