Winter Wonderland in South Bend

Ed's half sister, Merilou, passed away on January 1st. Ed and I headed in to Chicago on Wednesday for her visitation and funeral service. Merilou was 77 years old and had been battling lung cancer for several years. There were so many people at both the visitation and funeral who had great stories to tell about her life. She will definitely be missed! We enjoyed visiting with family members Ed hasn't seen in years, and several I had never met before.

While in Illinois, we were also able to visit with my mom and dad. Mom had just had surgery on her foot, so it was good to be able to personally see how she was doing. We had a brief, but very nice visit.

Ed and I headed to South Bend on Friday night. We were hoping to be able to visit an Amish furniture factory and look at what they had to offer in bedroom furniture on Saturday. As we were on our way to South Bend, Carrie texted us to alert us to the fact that they were receiving some "lake effect snow" in the area. On the drive there we experienced dry roads, which quickly became "white out" conditions. As we approached South Bend, the snow increased and roads conditions deteriorated. We were pretty relieved when we finally pulled into their drive.

The next morning Dennis and Ed headed outside to assess the situation.



Armed with a snow blower and shovels, they cleared off the driveway.



The view from outside their back patio door of the pool in their backyard.



And their neighbor's tree.



The furniture factory was open on Saturday. They only had a foot of snow. We tried to drive over there, but just got a few miles down the road, couldn't see in front of us, turned around and headed home. Later in the day the sun came out. A winter wonderland.



This morning Dennis told us they had received 38.5 inches of snow since Thursday night, 25 of those inches on Saturday. Their cul-de-sac was plowed out enough this morning that we were able to get out and head for home. The roads were pretty clear once we were 40 minutes or so south of South Bend. We only had a few inches here at home. So thankful to be home safely. We made it to church just a few minutes late and have spent the afternoon relaxing - getting ready for another week at work.