SS #7 Snowbound

Summary

The Stoneybrook weather reports have been full of snow predictions for days. Since no snow has actually fallen, the sitters are pretty skeptical when yet another storm is predicted. To their surprise, the Big One hits.

Mary Anne and Mallory are sitting for the Pike kids. Mr. and Mrs. Pike are heading to New York for a very long day to visit friends, so they'll be on their own for almost 24 hours. When the snow hits, the Pike parents aren't able to get home. The problem? There's no food in the house. Mrs. Pike had left them enough money for school lunches, and enough food for the meals they'll need to eat while the parents are away, but when the kids end up alone over night, Mary Anne and Mal quickly realize that they could be in trouble. Luckily, Logan comes over once the snow has stopped falling with a backpack full of food.

Kristy invites Bart over to watch some movies and have dinner with her family. Once the snow starts to pile up, Elizabeth and Watson decide that Bart should just spend the night. Kristy is pretty horrified by this; she doesn't want Bart to see her in (gasp!) her pajamas with (horrors!) messy morning hair, so she sleeps with her door locked for part of the night, and sets her alarm for 5:30 the next morning. She gets up early, showers, shaves her legs for the first time, curls her hair, and puts on makeup. It takes her an hour and a half to do all this, but the effort is worth it in the end, since Bart tells her she looks beautiful.

Stacey heads out to Washington Mall to get her hair permed for the big Winter Wonderland dance that's coming up. By the time she's done, the snow has really started to fall. She and her mom start for home on the highway, but Maureen eventually decides that the side streets would be better. Before too long, their car is stuck in the snow. The heater even stops working! Then, out of nowhere, a man drives up and offers to take the Mc Gills back to his place for the night. Stacey is freaked out; she's convinced the man is going to murder them. In the end, she and her mom do go with him, and her turns out to be a legitimately nice guy. His name is Ken Schiavone, and he and his wife and baby are more then welcoming to the stranded Mc Gills. In fact, they get along so well that they almost don't want to leave the next day.

Jessi is in Stamford, rehearsing for her dance school's production of The Nutcracker when the storm hits. Before long, she and the rest of the students find out that none of their parents will be able to get to the school to pick them up, so they'll be spending the night there. Jessi is worried, though; Quint is supposed to be arriving in Stoneybrook that day to visit with the Ramseys and attend the Winter Wonderland dance. She has no idea where he is or what happened to him...until he shows up at the school in one piece. When Mr. Ramsey didn't show up to get him at the train station, he walked to the dance school.

Claudia is sitting for the Perkins girls, and ends up in a situation that's similar to the one that Mal and Mary Anne found themselves in. The Perkins parents are out visiting friends and can't get home, so Claud gets to baby-sit overnight. It's pretty uneventful, other than thinking Chewy was lost for a little while (he was in the basement).

Dawn and her mother end up spending the night at the airport. Jeff was supposed to fly in the day the storm hit, but he ended up getting rerouted through Washington D.C. He makes it to Stoneybrook safely the next day.

Rating: 4

Thoughts and Things

• If Quint (who had probably never been to Stamford before) could walk all the way from the train station to the dance studio, and Mr. Spier could walk all the way over to the Pikes to check on Mary Anne and Mallory, why couldn't Bart walk the few blocks home? Oh...wait...I know. Kristy wouldn't have had a plot in this book if he'd done that.
• Speaking of Bart, he didn't seem all that enthusiastic about going over to the Thomas-Brewer house in the first place. He seemed perfectly happy to spend the night, but Kristy kind of had to push him into the whole idea of movies and dinner.
• It seems a little odd to me that the Ramseys would be okay with their 11 year old daughter's "boyfriend" staying in their house. I can't see them being okay with Jessi even HAVING a boyfriend at her age!
• I love the Schiavones, and I wish we could have seen more of them!
• Dawn's freaking out over Jeff's flight issues got really annoying. I never noticed all the panicking before.
• Mallory says she hopes the Winter Wonderland dance isn't postponed, because she and Ben can't wait that long. Ummm....what exactly do they have planned???