span xmlns=””/spanbr /div class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”a href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hRmjyAC3CBs/TS3wVUJX-7I/AAAAAAAAAWI/aBJXkBI648g/s1600/DSC_0288.JPG” imageanchor=”1″ style=”clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;”img border=”0″ height=”212″ src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hRmjyAC3CBs/TS3wVUJX-7I/AAAAAAAAAWI/aBJXkBI648g/s320/DSC_0288.JPG” width=”320″ //a/divspan xmlns=””It seems that our Christmas vacation was extended by Mother Nature this year. We have been home bound for 3 days by a snowfall that lasted a few hours. How does that happen you may ask?/spanbr /span xmlns=””br //spanbr /Well, when you live in the south where snow iusually /imelts by the afternoon there is not much need for a lot of snowplows. But when you get a heavy snowfall and then freezing temperatures, the 45 snowplows in the state cannot cover every side street in the area. It doesn’t happen often around here, but 2011 seems to be the year.br /br /span xmlns=””This is a BIG difference from growing up in Chicago. I remember teaching and school getting cancelled due to wind chills of below -40°. I remember one snow storm where there was 3 feet of snow on the ground and it was still falling. We had school the next day because the roads were clear by morning. Here we have 6 inches and the state shuts down. br //spanbr /span xmlns=””Kids have been off of school for 3 days now and the people in my house do not enjoy being cooped up for too long. Yesterday we did venture out because the shubby/s kids had MAJOR cabin fever. We piled everyone into the car and drove emslowly/em to WalMart. em{We did grow up driving in snow after all.} /emThe good thing about the drive is that there were not too many cars on the road. On the way, we saw many people walking in the snow em{in regular shoes…can you say “frostbite/em”} to the stores to stock up on basic necessities. Once we got there we saw that many people did not plan for this storm and were stocking up. There was no bread and no chocolate chip Eggo waffles em{a major staple in our house}! br //em/spanbr /span xmlns=””While we were waiting for hubby to come in from parking the car em{he dropped us at the front so we didn’t have to trudge through the slush} /emI spotted a person walking out with a new 47″ LCD flat screen. I guess being trapped indoors can lead to major financial decisions. Personally, I was thinking how being snowed in was causing us to spend emless/em money because we were eating at home and not out span style=”text-decoration: line-through;”buying Dunkin Donuts iced Carmel lattes/span shopping. But the person I saw just spent at least $700 on a television! Yikes! I am sure that the person did not whip out cash for that baby. I would not be surprised if she had put it on a credit card. Not too many people have $700 cash in their pocket unless they have planned for an expense like that. br //spanbr /span xmlns=””I’m sure they will enjoy that television immensely, but I sure hope they have enough food./spanbr /a href=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy.png” target=”_blank”img alt=”Anna” border=”0″ src=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy.png” //a