Oh. My. Goodness. What a week! We went from having a tiny dusting of snow on Halloween to having a nice fluffy coating of snow 3 days later. The temperature also went from being comfortable (around freezing) to being -17C with the windchill. Brr! (We are such wimps at the beginning of winter. Come spring, we'll be running around without jackets at -17!) Suddenly the push was on to make sure that I had all of the winter gear ready and accounted for. Adults - yes. Three older children - yup. Snow gear for the baby - nowhere to be found. I searched high and low. I looked inside the house, or in bins in the storage trailer outside, or at our shop, or at my mom and dad's. Nuthin'. I was starting to feel like I had lost a small portion of my mind. Normally I can find things. I can help other people find things. I was running out of ideas. I asked my sister if I had sent snowsuits home to PEI with her last March when she was up visiting. No luck there. I thought maybe I had worse baby brain than I thought last winter. I started shopping around online to see what MEC and Hanna Anderssonand eBay had to offer.
After about a week of searching, I hadn't found what I had been looking for but I did find a long lost box of my childhood toys at my mom and dad's and a playpen that has been M.I.A. for about 9 months too (hello crawlspace!). Anyway, I digress...
I had pretty much given up on finding the snowsuits. I thought maybe the snowsuits were accidentlythrown away or given away or something. I prayed that I would either find them in the next day or find a good deal on something online.
Then something happened. I ran out of laundry soap. That probably sounds like nothing, but it took me on a path I wouldn't have otherwise traveled. Each time my parents-in-law come to visit they stock up on basics for us like toilet paper, paper towel, and laundry soap. Things that are expensive to buy up here because of freight costs. Living in a very small house, we don't have much room to store such bulky extras so we keep them at our shop. I went into the utility room at the shop yesterday for laundry soap. On my way out I thought I better have one last look in one of the storage rooms in case I had missed the bin or bag (I was doubting my memory by this point). It wasn't in the room but I found a potential fire hazard. A big plastic garbage bag containing extra paper towel had slid against the heat register in the room that we thought was turned off. Apparently not. It must have come on with the recent cold weather, despite the thermostat being turned all the way down. It had melted through the garbage bag, the plastic bag around the paper towel rolls, and had started to turn the paper towel a slight golden shade. YIKES! I grabbed the bag, restocked the bathroom and kitchen with paper towel and then proceeded to go back and check all of the electric registers in the building to make sure there was nothing touching any of them. When I got to the kitchen register I noticed a blue bin peeking out from underneath a stack of paint trays (one of those projects that I keep intending to get done!). I opened it up and - voila! Baby winter gear. I screamed and jumped around and laughed and did a happy dance. Thankfully the air compressor was running so the two guys working in the shop at the time didn't hear me. Although, at that point I probably would have hugged anyone who walked by. Yippee! It turns out I did give away the smallest sizes of snowsuits (it started to come back to me) but I do have a small snow set that will work for Emma for the next month or so until she is big enough to fit into the next size. I'm so thrilled!
You never know what will happen when you run out of laundry soap...
