On the fifth day of Christmas

Our family will have a tradition for several years, and then it will change, and then we will have a different tradition for years after that, and then later it will change again.

So, after we were not little kids who believed in Santa Clause and all of that, we had the tradition of exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve after we ate dinner at a certain pizza place. Then, that particular pizza placed closed. Soon after that, my sister requested that we go back to exchanging gifts on Christmas Day.

And then she got married, and we went back to the idea of exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve, after we have dinner at a nice restaurant.

So that was the plan for yesterday, to exchange gifts after we had dinner at this certain restaurant, where we would eat oysters and fried alligator and other such things.

We don't get a lot of snow here, and even when we do it usually much to look at. It doesn't stick. Or there isn't enough of it to cover the ground. It usually melts before the day is over, so, if you want to see snow, you had better go out and look at it when it is actually snowing.

What we do have once in a while is ice on the ground. It might rain or snow, or sometimes make that sleet or freezing rain. Most of the time this will either happen at night, or if it has happened during the day it might melt and flow out into the streets, where if it gets below freezing during the night, it will freeze. So we sometimes have this ice on the roads, but it usually seems to be something that you have to deal with in the morning, unless you are one of those people who has to drive around a lot at night.

Yesterday we had various weather conditions happen during the day. First, there was a bit of rain, which wasn't bad, and most of it was gone before I got around to doing anything. We had a free Whataburger for breakfast and went to the grocery store for a few things that we forgot to get. Not anything Christmas related, just stuff that we were going to run out of, and the stores probably won't be open today, so we had to get the stuff yesterday. And then we went home, and it was snowing a bit, but it just wasn't cold enough yet for it to matter much. We had a lot of snow in chairs and planters and such, being just a bit cooler off of the ground that snow doesn't melt as fast.

So it had snowed, but there wasn't much snow on the ground to look at. But according to the news reports, we would probably get more. My brother called to say that we might have cancel dinner.

Well, it didn't seem that bad. There was a bit of snow on the ground, but there wasn't yet ice in the streets. The ground was for the most part wet, not frozen. Still, it might get worse later. It was just too soon to decide anything.

Later my mom called. My sister was offering to cook something if we wanted to cancel the restaurant reservations and just go straight to her house, since the plan was to go to her house after dinner anyway. My mom didn't want to put my sister to that much trouble, so she suggested going to a different restaurant that was closer to her house.

I did not think much of this going to a different restaurant idea. That would still mean that we would have to get out in traffic twice. If it was safe to go to a different restaurant, it was probably safe to go to the one that we had originally planned. What would make me feel safer was to go straight to my sister's place as she had suggested. As for making my sister cook, we could just order a pizza instead.

We went and got another free Whataburger for lunch while we waited to see if anyone had a better idea.

So we ended up going straight to my sister's place, about an hour earlier than we had planned to meet at the restaurant. And then if we heard that it was going to get ugly, we could go home earlier.

The pizza thing nearly didn't work out. As it took so long to figure out ordering the pizza, it was slightly after six, and the first place that we called closed for the day at six.

We ordered five pizzas from the next place. The wait was a bit longer than usual, but not that much longer since we decided to pick them up instead of having them delivered.

While we were eating pizza, there was more snow.

Well, if it is going to get bad, it is too late now. And if it got really bad, we were safe at somebody's house, not at a restaurant that we would have to leave no matter what.

We exchanged gifts. My siblings seemed to like what we got for them. We got a gift certificate to my husband's favorite restaurant and I got DVDs to all of the Star Trek movies. All eleven of them.

This is my year for getting DVDs, and I am pretty happy with them.

When we were ready to leave, there was ice on the ground, but not so much in the streets. The driveway and sidewalk I just could not walk on, and inched along until I could walk on the now snow covered grass or the mostly dry street. Once we were driving home, the ice was not much of a problem, except for the "bridges and overpasses" and the frozen puddles of water that were mostly near the curbs.

So that was nice enough. I don't expect the weather to be much of a problem today, but I don't think that there are any plans to speak of either. I will just sit here and wait to see what happens.