Monday, December 03, 2007

Worst Case Scenario Weather Weekend

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Sarah and I had an amazing time getting to see Phantom of the Opera in Chicago Friday night! We were able to make such good time getting to Chicago after work on Friday that we were able to check into our hotel before the show...yes, that's right. We actually got a hotel DOWNTOWN Chicago! That was because our original plans of staying with our friend Jackie fell through... I talked to Jackie Friday morning and she said that everyone in her house was down sick with the flu, so it probably would not be the best idea for us to stay there. Because we really wanted to spend some time downtown, we ended up splurging and getting a hotel room for the night. So Friday night was FANTASTIC.

Saturday morning was great, too, as Sarah enjoyed the workout equipment and I enjoyed the cable TV (gotta love TLC)! I had heard that there was supposed to be some severe weather (snow/freezing rain) that afternoon, but, hey, we're used to winter weather from being from the U.P., so why ruin a perfect Chicago day by leaving early?? We had a good time window shopping and trying Thai food from Wow Bao before it starting REALLY snowing! So we thought we'd head home. Worst case scenario? It might take an extra hour to get home, but since we were leaving at 3:00 p.m., we should be home by 6:00 or 7:00, right? I mean, how bad can the roads be? Ha ha ha. Ok, so we made it to I-65 in 2 hours (not too bad) and had about 7 miles to go until our normal exit for gas. Then traffic completely stopped. I mean, put-the-car-in-park-get-out-a-book stopped! So, 4 hours later, we made it past the icy spot and made it to the gas station. Then thankfully we had mostly clear (at least only wet instead of icy) roads for the next 2 hours home!

The next weather event took place Sunday afternoon at the Lafayette Christmas parade. I had been looking forward to taking Juju and my little friend 2nd grader Carter Knolhoff to the parade for a few weeks. So when they predicted warm weather but the possibility of rain, I thought, worst case scenario: it will be pouring. What's the chance of that? Okay, so it WAS pouring down rain, but they still had the parade and we still sat through most of it, although we had to leave early to be at church on time. The poor people with floats in the parade had to make do the best they could! Oh, and as I was getting up I forgot that the camera was loose in my lap, so I dropped my camera--uh, my SISTER'S camera--into a puddle of water (sorry, Sarah--it still works fine!) but everything dried out fine (I think). (It was hardly raining when our school marching band came through, thankfully.)
So despite all of these weather scenarios, I still had a fabulous time seeing Phantom of the Opera, staying in a hotel, being downtown Chicago, and adventurously attending the Lafayette Christmas parade!

Pastor Viars was traveling back from O'Hare on Saturday as well and it also took him 8 hours to get home. He made a good point in his sermon on heaven that, humanly speaking, in any big event or tragedy, from a human perspective, we tend to think of the worst case scenario as being death. But even in this worst case scenario, we as Christians can know that this isn't really all that bad, because we'll just be going to heaven! Is that the worst that can happen?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

WHAT! you droppe my camera in a puddle and I'm finding out about it on your blog??!?!? This is just not right. At least when I lost your memory card in my computer I at least had the respect to tell you about it. You do know that this means that if my camera stops working b/c of this, I get your new camera.

Anonymous said...

Ooh, rough. Sounds like it was a long car ride. What time did ya'll get back to the house?

(Sorry about your camera, Sarah.)

Anonymous said...

You had a much worst case scenario weather weekend than we had. All we had was 10 inches of snow, the streets were plowed Sunday AM and since Matt couldn't get to the church parking lot, Eric and Tom Booth were plowing it a half hour before church started. So..we had services as usual. Icy roads and snowy roads every day this week until this AM--normal winter! We are up to 18-24" snow banks and 12-15" snow on the ground. BTW Sarah, it's just stuff!

Anonymous said...

Oh, I forgot to ask--Did you have a book to read??

Jonathan Haynie said...

Oh yeah? Well, it's been snowing all day up here at Maranatha!!! At least you don't have to shovel rain!

Sounds like ever so much fun!

Erin said...

Great pictures by the way! Glad that you had fun!