But didn’t school JUST start?  And wasn’t the kids’ first weekend a THREE day weekend?  Yes and yes.  But to be fair (pun intended), this 4-day weekend was not planned in advance, well not entirely, anyway.  It began with Monday being Fair Day for the kids – our county fair opens tomorrow, and the kids are off school on Monday to go to the fair and also because many of them have 4-H projects that will be judged at the fair on Monday – that was a planned day off.  So then today, my husband was driving our daughter to school, when he realized he was the only one on the road and at the school.  At least, that’s what he thought -it was so foggy they couldn’t see much of anything…  so they returned home only to find that there was a two-hour delay because of the fog – our phones had been turned off so we didn’t get the early morning call…  So anyway, the 2 hour delay turned into an entire fog day because the dense fog would not clear early enough for the school district to send the buses into the country to pick up the kids.  Fog Day on Friday + Fair Day on Monday = the first 4-Day weekend of the new school year,  taking place on only the third weekend of the new school year!  Luckily our student calender is set up to include 5 calamity days, and in NW Ohio, early morning fog is considered a calamity, I guess!  What will we do when the 5 yearly calamity days are taken out of the calendar since the governor’s plan calls for calamity days to be phased out?  Wait and see, I guess…

And now I have to totally rearrange my day  –  so much for advance planning!  I’ll have to juggle the not-4-kid-friendly errands I have with my husband’s planned business call – keeping 4 kids quiet and out of the way for that?  Good luck to me!  These are the times when I wish he had his own office…  The benefits of working at home outweigh the negatives of him working at an office of course, but on days like these, ugh!  It’s funny because I’m not native to NW Ohio and so both fog days and fair days are new to me – man, would I have loved these as a kid.  As an adult…  not so fun.  Maybe we can have another calamity day later this year when we have nothing planned and we can just sit inside and watch movies and play games all day…  Then, let it snow!

Everyone who has been reading my blog since I started it in the beginning of 2008 knows my disdain for the 2-hour delay so frequently used at my daughter’s school.  Well, it’s that time of year again – Tuesday was our first 2-hour delay of the school year.  It’s not like I want the buses to go out on the slippery country roads and endanger kids and drivers; it’s just that the delay throws off the entire family for the whole day!  If there was some way to effectively implement the delay for those who would have trouble getting to the school in poor weather conditions, I think that would be a good solution.  However, it’s obvious that would lead to kids falling behind other kids and such, so it’s obvious why they don’t do that.  But 2-hour delays frustrate me nonetheless.

My 2-year-old gets frightened or crabby if we do things differently from our normal routine.  So when there’s a 2-hour-delay, she sleeps in until after 10 and wakes up disoriented, hungry and crabby.  I guess I could wake her, but I figure if she’s sleeping in then she needs the sleep – and it will pay off for me later in the day because her daily pre-naptime intensity won’t be quite as demanding as usual.  So Tuesday’s delay was caused by snow, which meant that my 4-year-old wanted to play in it all day (no preschool today).  But of course she wants someone to play with, and I’m not comfortable letting my 2 and 4-year-olds play outside by themselves of course.  And on Tuesday it was too cold to take the baby out with us…  So we were all stuck inside and my middle two have a rivalry going on, which means that they fight over everything and constantly; Tuesday being no exception because why would it be?  Hopefully the salt shortage there is for the roads this winter won’t lead to more school delays – our first one did not go smoothly!