The Arctic Blast

Last week I got my "Welcome to Minnesota" blast of cold air. The air temperature was -14 (yes, you read that right, 14 degrees below zero) and the wind chill added on to that brought the temperature to a warm and balmy -40!! IT WAS COLD!! But to make it worse, there were 40 mile an hour winds that picked up the loose snow and blew it making it white out conditions when we tried to drive. Now don't think I am crazy trying to drive in that stuff, we had to go get the kids from Grandpa's house. It is normally a 20-25 minute drive to Grandpa's, but it took us well over an hour to get there. Now, I know it would have been safer to leave them there and get them when the wind stopped, but it was also my birthday and I was being selfish. I really wanted them with me. Plus we were having a birthday celebration at Grannie's house later that night and I didn't want them to miss out. They would really have been mad at me. So we drove out to get them. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was STRESSING. So being that the weather was bad, we decided to go straight to Grannie's house from Grandpa's. Everything went really well on the way out to Grandpa's. It was coming from Grandpa's house that things got a little scary. There was this car that we over took on the road that was going what seemed like 5 mph. Then every time the wind picked up and blew more snow, he would stop dead in the road!! Talk about a heart stopping event. We were both afraid that we were going to get rear-ended following this guy. Barry pulled off the road and waited for what seemed like an hour but was only about 10 minutes until he thought that it was safe to proceed. We had a few cars pass us as we waited and we jumped in at the end of one small caravan of cars that was going to Mankato. It was easier to drive knowing that you had someone to follow. We did make it safely to Grannie's and the birthday party was great. The boys were happy to party with the cousins.