Snow in Atlanta! Or: The Longest Commute of My Life

You may have heard a thing or two about a snowfall here in the south.  It's so exciting!  It's so rare!  It's so...endlessly stressful.

August and I drove down to Tallahassee to visit Haley on Sunday night, realizing that there was snow predicted for Atlanta on Tuesday.  I really didn't get too concerned because not too much was expected, and it was supposed to start falling later in the day; as long as we were home by 3ish, I thought we would miss the traffic.  August and I set out with the intent of getting home before rush hour traffic started, and I told JP we'd see him for dinner.

Oh my goodness, was I ever wrong.  I'm sure you've heard the stories about people sleeping in their cars on the highways in Atlanta.  It was such a tremendous disaster on the roads, and I cannot tell you how anxious I was to be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with a 7-month-old in the backseat.  We were incredibly lucky to be coming back from a weekend trip and had plenty of supplies (diapers, bottles, food, etc.), but it didn't feel great to know that there was a very good chance that we wouldn't make it home that night.  To give you some perspective, JP works about 4 miles from our house, and it took him 6 hours to get home- after leaving his car on the side of the road 1/4 mile from home and walking in the ice to get home to Mia.

To make a very long story shorter, after many increasingly-frantic phone calls from family and JP, August and I were able to get off the road at 9:30pm (we'd been traveling since 10:30am, and hit traffic at about 2pm) and stay overnight with some incredibly generous friends.  Prior to that, we stopped just outside of Atlanta for a quick feeding, diaper change, and gas top-off; we also were able to pull over to a gas station for August's dinner and bedtime diaper change at about 7.  In 11.5 hours in the car, August only fussed for about 30 minutes total.  He is a total trooper.  And those friends we stayed with?  They had hot soup and a glass of wine waiting for me when we drove up.  It was heavenly.

On Wednesday, the roads were still icy and untreated until about 11am.  August and I loaded up and (very slowly and cautiously) head home and settled into our living room at 1ish.  It was a very long 27 hours of travel.

At the end of it, though, August got to experience some legit snow here in Georgia!  How adorable is that little snowsuit?

We got about 2 inches in our neighborhood, which he was totally 'meh' about.  August is not easily impressed, apparently.

By Thursday morning, the snow was on its way out.  What a way to wrap up January!