Monday, January 18, 2016

Library in the Snowstorm {Years Ago}

We lived in the Washington DC area for six winters, and I can only remember one winter where we had significant amounts of snow.



Addison was in sixth grade and was invited to spend the night with her friend Julianna who lived in the area (thought not really close to us) one weekend in January. There was snow in the forecast, but nobody really expected it to amount to much. After making sure that it would be okay if she had to stay a little longer if the roads got bad, we let her go.

We think that's the snow storm that eventually got dubbed "Snowmageddon." It was significantly more than we expected, and there wasn't any safe way for us to go get her on Saturday morning.

Addison and Julianna didn't mind being stuck in the snow. They were the only two younger girls, but Julianna's older sister had several friends over for the weekend too. In fact, fairly early on Saturday morning they decided to walk about a mile to the library to check out new books.

They got to the library and walked right in. There was nobody there though. The doors were open, the lights were on, the computers were all up, but they didn't see anybody. They proceeded to find a couple of books each and then, like good sixth graders, they used the self-check out stations to check them all out before walking back to Juliana's house

A few hours later, they walked back to the library. Addison doesn't remember if they were just bored or if they had finished their first books (perhaps the more likely scenario, knowing those two). The library was surrounded by police cars. They asked one of the officers what was going on and were told that they were investigating a break-in at the library. Apparently, the library workers had not been able to get to the library at the normal opening time. As the girls found out, the library was on an automated timer system and opened all by itself. It wasn't just that they hadn't seen any librarians that morning -- there actually weren't any there at all.

Addison didn't stay stuck at Julianna's house for very long. We're pretty sure we were able to dig out and go get her by Sunday afternoon.

It's a good thing, though, because the DC area got hit about a week later with another significant snowfall -- Snowpocalypse.

By the time all was said and done, the snow piled up pretty high in our neighborhood. (Yes, that's Brennan sitting right in front of a street sign and Lauren perched beside him. I think she was bundled up too much to move much.)



The girls didn't take any pictures of themselves that weekend when they broke into the library, but I found these pictures of them taken at camp about a year and a half later. (I think if they had been sixth graders these days, they would've taken selfies in the empty library to post on instagram. Alas, they weren't and I'm left without pictures of their adventures.)



And just for fun, I'll share a picture of Addison and Julianna when they got to meet up in Arizona last summer. They've grown up a lot but still look pretty much the same to me.



This week is the eleventh week in our Blogging Through the Alphabet challenge -- letter L. Click the button below for this week's linky.



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