The day the world went upside down!

Sunday started happily enough, I ran Pokemon Platinum pre release, a well attended event, where everyone had fun, walked Gabe back home afterwards, then left dh handling the kids, whilst I went back to store to run YuGiOh! with Mike. All was going swimmingly till it started to snow. SS had to go back to Leeds. We rang his mum, no answer.....she never rang back.....so by the time it came to take him home as originally arranged in early evening, the weather was making things slightly tricky. So we braved it. The M1 north of Sheffield turned out not to be gritted (despite signs saying gritters were out, we saw none and it was obviously not gritted, a fact Ken Livingstone has suggested on the news this evening, was due to overtime costs on a Sunday, why do anything prior to midnight eh?) Thus, when the snow got heavier, the 3 lanes, turned to one, being tentativly driven by a stream of cars. We were however still moving, unlike the opposite side of the Motorway, who just past the Barnsley turning had a bus, on its side to contend with. We viewed the que and the weather with interest as we continued north.

SS was duely dropped back at his mums, who apologised for not ringing back earlier. We were then left with a choice. Go and sit in que from hell and wait in the increasing snow for the upturned bus to be removed (with two small children in the car) or attempt to find a hotel. We did the latter. The lovely people at Premier Inn at J39 had no room, so they rang the other local ones for us until a room was found at J41. We got back in the car and headed north.

I have to admit I do like Premier Inns, we don't stay in them often, as we usually have 5 kids in tow, the last time was when dd2 was still in a travel cot, they allow 5 in a room then! Most hotels don't do 5 people to a room, more's the pity. The kids got given some goody bags, with stickers, colouring and a bedtime story in them, which made them very happy. Then we dined in the oddly named Rhubarb Triangle pub next door, prior to retiring to our room, where upon I found Elbow in Concert, ideal for persuading the kids to sleep :-) although I have to say I quite like Elbow, but with the BBC Concert Orchestera in tow, it had the edge for getting the kids to sleep.

This morning dawned with someone thumping about in the room above us (5am to be exact), although I was the only person to notice this. Dh checked the snow at 6am, which was about 6" deep! So we decided to get up and risk the drive back to Ripley. We made it for 8.15am, just in time to change the kids, particularly dd2, who got travel sick 5 mins from home, bless her, she didn't know what was happening, having never thrown up since she was a baby, her face was a picture. Ripley didn't have lots of snow when we got back, but its sure made up for it since.

We were supposed to go to Spring Fair at Brum today, if the roads are ok, we may go tomorrow, am praying school doesn't throw a snow day.

Anyway I should post some snowy photos so here they are, complete with my snowman envy, the HUGE snowman is not ours, it belongs to a family down the road who've not long been living on our street. Dd1 goes to school with their little boy, though he's two years older, I think she may have a slight crush on him :-).

Our poxy snowman (I only had fleecy gloves, nearly lost my fingers)

The fantastic Snowman down the road (I hope you don't mind me blogging this! in fact this photo doesn't do it justice)

Our snowy street, I'm loving this weather, hasn't snowed like this in years, I fetched dd1 from school on the sledge! how fab is that :-)