In February, Texas experienced a once-in-a-century snowstorm. You probably heard about it on the news because our wind turbines froze and it was cloudy so the solar energy panels couldn’t work and so the whole state was in an energy crisis for about a week.
Typically we get snow or ice maybe once a year where I live in central Texas. Maybe.
This year it snowed twice.
The first time was in January and it was so fun and happy. I was still living in an apartment with my roommate because Caleb and I hadn’t gotten married yet, so I had a blast walking around the apartment complex with my friends and building giant snowmen.
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The second time wasn’t as enjoyable.
It started sleeting the Thursday before Valentine’s Day and my school sent everyone home early because the roads were getting bad. On Friday we had to teach everyone virtually from home.
That Saturday the roads were better, so Caleb and I ventured out of our home and went grocery shopping.
On Sunday the roads were icy again and so we spent Valentine’s Day at home.
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Then Monday came.
I thought the January snowfall was impressive. That looked trivial compared to how much snow we woke up to that morning.
It was 5 degrees Fahrenheit that morning- the coldest I’ve ever been around!
School was canceled for me and we didn’t have to online-teach because people’s power was starting to go out. Caleb was able to work from home so that was great!
My parents and grandparents lost power at some point that day. The local university also lost power. Friends who live in our neighborhood lost power.
Caleb and I never lost power.
For the first few days, we totally expected that we would eventually lose power, so we weren’t burning our firewood so that we’d have enough to keep warm when the power went out.
Tuesday came and we still had power.
My brother and his roommate who attend the local university came over that evening to take warm showers and to use our oven to bake a frozen pizza.
After they had showered and while we were eating the pizza, Caleb and I said, “Why don’t y’all just stay?”
So they drove slowly back to campus to pack up belongings and to grab their girlfriends and their girlfriends’ roommate and headed back to our house.
We hosted those five college students from Tuesday night through Friday afternoon. We both learned a TON about hosting people and being hospitable through this experience.
Today I wanted to share with you three lessons in hospitality I learned from the snowpocalypse.
Keep reading below or you can listen to me tell the stories on the Coffee With Kara podcast.
1. Your Home Doesn’t Have to be Perfect
Caleb and I got married on January 22nd and then we were gone on our honeymoon until January 27th. So even though we had moved the majority of our stuff into the house before we got married, we still had to get the last few things from my apartment- such as my old bed, my couch, and my desk.
By February 7th we had unpacked almost all of our boxes.
By February 15th the Snowpocalypse had begun. So we had really only been “settled” for a week.
However, in my eyes, our home was far from ready for having people over.
My lemon kitchen decor was thrown on top of our cabinets and no pictures were hung up there yet.
We didn’t have curtains up in the living room.
We didn’t have a shower curtain up in our guest bathroom.
So when my brother called me asking if he and his roommate could come over on Tuesday to take showers, they had to use Caleb and my bathroom because that’s the only shower with a curtain.
They went back to campus to pick up their girlfriends and their girlfriends’ roommate and to pack up for the week. I texted my brother’s girlfriend a list of things to bring.
I had to get over my perfectionist self and just accept the fact that saying “Bring a shower curtain rod and a shower curtain” really isn’t that big of a deal.
And it ended up working out- they threw the curtain down in the back of my brother’s truck so their bags wouldn’t get wet from all the snow and ice.
Win-win!
While my brother and his roommate were picking them up and packing, Caleb and I were speed cleaning our house.
We took boxes that eventually need to go up to our attic into the garage.
We ran our Roomba.
Cleaned the bathroom.
Wiped down the kitchen.
We also set up the guest bedroom. So, my old bed has a trundle with it, so we rolled that out, took off the trundle mattress, and moved that to the living room. Then, we blew up the queen-sized air mattress that we got as a wedding gift. (Side note: if you’re not married yet, definitely register for a queen-sized air mattress!)
Below you see what the guest room looked like. This is what we affectionately call our “Baylor” room. (Check out the “Home” highlight on my Instagram for the story behind that LOL!)
All three girls were able to fit in this room.
Below is what our living room looked like. You see the TV hooked up to Caleb’s laptop so we could watch The Princess and The Frog on DVD since our internet was out. You also see the trundle mattress with a T-shirt quilt and the couch that my brother slept on.
We tacked up Caleb’s old blackout curtains from college because our house gets a TON of natural light and we knew my brother and his roommate would want to be able to sleep in in the mornings.
This is what the living room looked like during the day. We thumb tacked the curtains up during the day so we could use natural light instead of electricity.
Below is what the bathroom looked like- we didn’t have a towel rack yet so they had to hang their towels on the closet door to dry.
And you know what?
No one cared.
No one cared that they were sleeping on a couch or an air mattress.
It didn’t matter that we didn’t have cute curtains up yet.
So what that we didn’t have a shower curtain?
We were all warm and safe, and that’s ultimately what matters.
2. Your Menu Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect
On Saturday, February 13th, the roads were safe and so Caleb and I ran to HEB (the best grocery store in Texas) and got groceries for the week. Knowing it would just be the two of us, we got things to make soup for Valentine’s Day which we’d have leftovers from for a few days, bread for sandwiches, and pasta for a meal later.
Our simple meal plan for two didn’t end up happening!
Instead, we learned how to be creative with what we did have.
These were our meals that week:
Tuesday:
- Frozen pizza for dinner with just my brother, his roommate, Caleb and I
Wednesday:
- Leftover muffins or pop tarts the college kids brought for breakfast
- We fixed an early lunch of chicken tenders that we had in the freezer
- For dinner we made soup- literally using leftover chicken breasts from our soup from Sunday and salsa verde I happened to have in the freezer. We just dumped in cans of beans and tomatoes that I had and called it a meal. I don’t really want to repeat that soup LOL! The college kids made garlic “biscuits” to go with the soup from bisquick.
Thursday:
- We made brunch. I had a muffin mix that would make 6 muffins so I made that. We also made hashbrowns and scrambled eggs for breakfast tacos. (One of the girls is gluten-free so we needed to make sure we had a gluten-free option for her at each meal.)
- Sandwiches for lunch.
- Spaghetti and leftover chicken for dinner. (Funny story about that on the podcast!)
Friday:
- Pancakes and hashbrowns for brunch
- They left before dinner
So the meals definitely weren’t as planned out as they probably would have been if we knew we’d be adopting 5 college students, but it all worked out.
We all ate.
We laughed about how much spaghetti there was due to my oopsie.
And I definitely want to have a well-stocked pantry and freezer should I have to serve food to people last minute ever again!
3. Coup is a Great Big Group Game
Over the past two years, I’ve definitely been working on expanding my two-player game collection. Having games that are only played with two people was great during quarantine when my roommate and I spent so much time together.
I also knew that eventually when Caleb and I got married and started living together that we’d want games we could play just us.
That being said, I only have a few games that all seven of us could play.
These are the games we played:
- Coup (all of us played)
- Skipbo (only 4 of us played)
- The Awkward Storyteller (only 6 of us played)
- Tsuro (all of us played)
Other group games I own that we could have played but didn’t:
- Villainous (my brother hates this game 😭 So sad!)
- The Resistance (my brother also doesn’t like this game)
- Disney Apples to Apples (it’s in my classroom at school)
- Disney Codenames (it was at my parent’s house)
- Balderdash (it was also at my parents)
Coup was definitely a crowd favorite! We played so many games of coup every single day!
So basically, if you don’t have Coup buy it because if you’re ever snowed into your house with a bunch of college students you’ll be glad you have it!
Technically, Coup is a 3-6 player game, but it worked fine with seven people.
If you don’t know what it is, basically it’s a game where you have to bluff and be the last man standing. Your goal is to get enough money to perform a coup and kill off one of the other players. Hard to explain in a paragraph, but loads of fun!
Bonus: Put washi tape on cups to write your name on if you don’t have disposable cups
I forgot we did this until I saw the picture above!
Caleb and I didn’t have disposable cups and so we set out washi tape and a sharpie for people to use to label their cups so we wouldn’t mix them up.
Caleb gets all the credit for this idea and I think he’s brilliant!
When people got a new cup they’d just move their washi tape to the new cup! It was a great system :)
So there are our lessons in hospitality from the Texas snowpocalypse of 2021.
If you live in Texas, I hope the snowpocalypse didn’t affect you too terribly and that you’re fine now!!
Inglês Foco
Great post, Kara! Very interesting!