It Snowed...and We Had FUN!!!

The worst winter storm in decades hit the UK yesterday, bringing us almost 10 inches snow! Our flight from Tenerife was delayed on departure and then we had to circle around Gatwick while they de-iced the runway. We zipped through customs thanks to our very James Bond-ish Iris scan (your retina is scanned in this machine and you never even have to speak to anyone or stand in line...it's brilliant!). Our bags came out with a little snow on top after their journey from the plane to the baggage claim. Thankfully, we decided to do short-term garage parking, eliminating the need for 20 minutes of scraping and defrosting. Good thing...because we were grossly unprepared for this storm. We don't have a scraper, de-icer, and neither of us had any winter clothes with us.

I felt pretty confident when thinking about driving home. After all, we lived in Columbus, Ohio for 2 years and I've driven in snow before. As we left the airport, there was plenty of snow everywhere, but it seemed that the major roads were at least being plowed....until we got about 5 miles out. The road just kept getting worse and worse. It got so bad that the only reason we were able to keep going was because we were following an SUV and borrowing the tracks it made. As we round-abouted off the major highway to get to Richmond, I was seriously beginning to doubt if we would actually make it our house. We did get stuck a few times, fish tailed most of the way, and Edgar had to push the car out of an intersection because we couldn't get any traction under our tires. Our flat sits in the middle of a hill, so I found the road that was the least steep and we gave it a go. With the pedal to the metal in first gear, we crept up the hill at 2mph, sliding the whole way. We finally crested and pulled into our driveway at 3:15am. What should have taken us 45 minutes, took us 2 hrs and 15 minutes. But we made it home safe and sound. I think that had our plane been delayed another 30 minutes, we could not have made it back.

We woke up to a beautiful blanket of white this morning. All of London transport was closed (there were a few exceptions), so Edgar got to have a snow day!! He did get some work done here at home, and then we went outside to play! We built a snowman, made snow angels, and had a snowball fight. The snow is pretty dry, so it's great for building a snowman, but kind of hurts when packed into a tight snowball!

London's been getting alot of flack for allowing itself to be shut down by 6 inches of snow. What people don't understand is that it doesn't really snow that much here. We generally get a dusting or maybe even an inch. It usually isn't freezing outside, so it melts away pretty quickly. This storm brought a ton of heavily falling snow and freezing temperatures, so it's going to stick around for awhile. They just don't have the equipment to deal with it. No problem for us...we just get to drink hot chocolate and enjoy the beauty.