Oh Hail

We started school three weeks ago.  I knew we’d be feeling sad that our house guests had left and Philip was gone, too.  Our Nomad friends had to be moving on to their own brand, new home.  I don’t blame them and even though their visit was a short one, it was a great one!  Unfortunately, their leaving coincided with Philip’s return for Washington, DC.  In a great feat of government efficiency, his employer wanted him to return for an all expense paid (by the taxpayers) trip to undergo a polygraph and psychological evaluation.  Even though he is going to be working the exact same  job that he’s held for the last 4 years, it was important to determine whether or not he is the type of person that would sell our nation’s secrets and then lie about it.  We’re assuming he passed.

So anyhoo, left alone for the first time in a new city, I thought it best to dive into school.  The children were predictably excited to be starting American history with Sonlight’s Core 3.  Their new school books had been waiting for them for about 3 weeks, just taunting them.

Our first day back took forever.  We’ve never taken the summer off  before and I was astounded at how much math knowledge was lost and how much hand holding was needed.  However, Boo and Pumpkin Girl were very supportive and assured me that in a few days, it would all come back to me.

After a late afternoon nap with Bip, I herded everyone in the car to go register Pumpkin for ballet.  It took longer than I’d anticipated because I missed my turn and had to backtrack, and it was rush hour.  Actually, rush hour had nothing to do with it because rush hour traffic here is like normal DC traffic.  In fact, I didn’t even realize it was “rush hour” until after we’d finished with the dance studio and someone piped up that they were hungry.

So we headed off to the McDonald’s near our house 1)because kids can never get enough of McD’s, 2)Bip had been trying to get a beany baby Grimace in his happy meal since we moved here and 3) they have a play area.  Sadly, they were out of beany babies, but we ate there anyway.

After we ate, I let the children play.  I heard a crack of thunder and wondered if I’d remembered to close the upstairs windows at home.  It wasn’t worth worrying about or dragging the children home for, so I turned my attention back to watching people go through the drive through.  Then it started to rain.  Actually, it started to pour.  And you know what – this particular McDonald’s has a skylight-type roof over the play yard and the rain was really loud.  And it got louder and then I noticed the hail bouncing off ground outside.  Just pea size hail, no big deal.  Hail storms don’t really last that long, right?

Right.

All hell broke loose and the hail kept coming and grew bigger and bigger.  At some point the noise in the play yard was deafening, so I gathered up the children and took them into the restaurant, which had a normal, quieter roof.  There we watched the hail pound the parking lot and cover both it and the cars with ice.  It was really quite impressive, except for the fact that our car was out there, getting pounded by hail that was now the size of peach pits.

After the storm passed, the  children kept playing while we waited for the ice to melt.  I wasn’t too anxious to see what sort of damage was done to the car.  I skipped my usual iced vanilla latte out of guilt for going out for fast food and getting the car all dinged up.  Turns out, it wasn’t that bad.  A couple of spots may or may not be hail damage, but nothing to get fixed right away.  We’ll probably wait until the car looks more like a golf ball before heading to a body shop.

Upon our return home, we found our upstairs windows open and hail on the (brand new) roof, in the grass and on the back deck.  We wiped up the water on the window sills and went out to play in the ice.  We took some pictures for the blog.

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