We'd been told to expect some snow for Martin Luther King day, which gave us something to enjoy while school and work was out. We got about 4 inches that day.
Thomas was actually suffering with stomach ache and a fever, but I dosed him up with some tylenol and he was able to enjoy the snow until it wore off.
Building a snow fort
Olivia is always a good helper
Zach making a snow angel as he sleeps
Olivia and I made this snowman together
He was affectionately named Sam
Snowball fights
Ryan and Olivia ready for sledding
As expected school was cancelled on Tuesday as the snow continued to fall. Everyone went out and played again for a little while. Going to see the dentist doesn't always tend to be a high priority when there's snow on the ground so Spenser was home early too.
We were expected to have a ton of snow drop overnight on Tuesday and when I went to bed and saw nothing coming from the sky I figured that the weather people had just got it wrong again. Little did I know that I would be waking up to about another 14 inches of new snow. As Spense and I sat and watched the news before he left for work on Wednesday we saw just how hard our area was getting walloped compared to everyone else. Spense had to go and pick up a couple of staff members on his way in because they didn't have cars that would make it on the snowy roads. It wasn't really worth the drive though since they were only there for a few hours and they decided to cancel the rest of the week.
The kids found a small hill to sled down in the neighborhood
Lots of snow!
Poor Sam got pretty well covered
Zach could barely walk
I'm stuck!
Spense took Thomas, Olivia, and Ryan to do a little more sledding. Zach only went once. I think that our trip tubing damaged him somehow because every time I asked him if he wanted to go sled he told me that he didn't want to go to the place he went to with grandma and grandpa.
Olivia insisted on a picture with Sam before bed
When we went to bed on Wednesday night with the promise of another snow day little did we know that the worst was yet to come. A huge ice storm came through destroying trees everywhere and causing problems with power lines. The power went out around 8:45 a.m. just as I had put a load of laundry in the washing machine. We hoped that they would be able to maybe get it back on soon, but as we kept in touch with the outside world via Spenser's phone and saw how widespread the outages were we didn't hope for much.
Our tree that lost a few limbs. We were pretty lucky.
We spent a lot of the day by the fire, reading and playing games. The DSi's were also charged so that kept people entertained too. Everyone was pretty much over the snow, plus it was covered in a sheet of ice, so no one went outside. By the afternoon the kids were pretty stir crazy so Spense went and got Sadie and Connor to come play for a while. When it got dark and the flash lights came out we went and collected the rest of the family and drove around to find somewhere to eat.
Sadly, Panera was closing by the time we got there so we ended up at I.talia. It was good just to get out of the house. I think that we were all starting to feel a little cooped up. We went home to our dark house and camped out together in the living room in front of the fire.
We didn't wake up to any power changes Friday morning so we got on with the day. Luckily, we have a gas water heater so we could at least stay clean even if we had to do it in a cold and dark bathroom. We spent the day pretty much the same as the one before, but we went out for lunch this time. We found that places who had power last night had lost it so it took us a while to drive around and find somewhere to eat. We ended up at Wendy's with lots of other people from the area. The Johnson's called to say that they were jumping ship and heading down to Portland. They asked if we wanted to go too. By this point it was getting dark and late and packing up would have been a pain so we told them we would if we still had nothing on Saturday.
Base camp
We tried to keep this little guy warm
To keep the air from escaping up the stairs we put up some sheets hoping it would keep the family room warmer. It definitely did the job and we were super toasty if not a little white trashish.
Playing games
When we got home our power was still out although we were hopeful it wouldn't be too long because facebook was reporting some improvement. I had to love facebook! Spense cooked dinner with our camping gear in the garage and then we nestled down to a movie on the portable DVD player that I had charge up when I knew the storm was heading our way.
Isn't he resourceful?
Macaroni and cheese hit the spot
No popcorn with this movie
I woke up around 12:15 a.m. and thought I heard the central air running. When I looked up there were lights on too. I was so happy. I thought about running upstairs to put in some laundry incase it went back out again and to turn off all the lights that had probably been switched on on purpose, but I stayed in bed.
Zach was so excited this morning to find the power was back. He went around the whole house checking every light and declaring, "We got our power back." After 36 hours we are happy and grateful for our warm and light filled house. We did manage to cope pretty well though with our gas fire and camping equipment. The dri ice even managed to keep the freezer cold. We only lost a little bit of ice cream which we ate so it didn't go to waste anyway. Next year when I see those generators on sale again maybe we will buy one!
1 comment:
That storm was definitely out of the norm for this part of the world. Still, it seems like we have gotten a lot of snow around here these past few years. We lost power, but only for 30 hours. We lost quite a bit of food, but were lucky we didn't sustain any damage other than several tree limbs. Hopefully that will be the last winter blast for 2012!
Post a Comment