Here we start our 4th day of cohabitating in our extra-warm house while the outside world sits silent in drifted snow.  A pink sunrise is edging over the horizon illuminating diamond chips on the winter white ground.  What to do? What to do?  We’ve eaten more meals at home in four days than previously eaten at home in a month. We’ve played games, watched movies, downloaded apps, cleaned our rooms, tidied our laundry, thrown snowballs, eaten snow cream, gathered round the piano, fought over the computers, planned summer vacations.  We’ve bundled and unbundled, only to bundle again.  And in the end, know what I think?  I think we miss school.  We miss guitar lessons, and dance class and basketball practice for sure.  But we miss whispering with friends when the teacher’s back’s turned.  We miss the cafeteria mess followed by recess chaos.  We miss working on a new lesson, getting a good grade, reading another chapter in a book we forgot how much we loved.  We miss routine.  We miss consistency.  Again, the words come hard, but I think we miss school.

Yes, a snow day is fine. But when it turns to a snow week, the Lammers Family turns a little sour.  Thank God the sun is warming, even now, to restore the lives we so long to live.