Ice, Ice, and More Ice

About two weeks ago, January 26-28th, we had an ice storm. It's not the first one I've experienced here in Arkansas, nor the worst, but it definitely caused an issue with getting Gilli to school! I watched the news all night, watching EVERY SINGLE school in the county and all the surrounding counties announce that they were going to be closed. Not our school district! So we got up and got ready the next morning, yet when I went out to warm the truck up, I couldn't get in! I learned from the last storm, that you have to literally chip the ice off of the entire vehicle. It gets completely encased in ice, like it was in an ice cube. You have to chip away the ice from the door handles, around the door jams, the windows, the windshield, etc. I spent 20 minutes chipping ice before I thought I'd be able to get the door open...NOPE! Not for me! I had every ounce of ice removed from that door and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't open. Then I realized the locks were actually frozen! That's right, I have lived in some amazingly cold places; Idaho, Colorado, Montana, and never have I experienced the actual door locks to get frozen in the locked position. (It may help that I've never really locked my car until we moved here!) Anyway, I couldn't get the doors open until 11:45am! Looks like she got most of the day off anyway. When she got home from school, she told me 6 kids were absent anyway. I guess maybe I shouldn't have worried about it, but I did get her to school! I'm just sorry that she won't get her perfect attendance award this quarter. She got it last quarter though!