Winter Finally Arrived...With a Vengeance!

Yes, winter arrived the other day.  We went from a dusting of snow to a good 6 inches of it, preceded by a layer of ice.  All of that weight was too hard for some part of our local power system, and our neighborhood was without electricity for periods of time over the past 4 days.

Every time this happens, I go back into Ice Storm '98 mode....to have lived that is to be prepared.  Knowing that we were getting some foul weather got me out to stock up on cans, batteries, ensure the vehicles were full of gas and flashlights and candles handy.

Sure enough, the power dropped out on the night of the initial freezing rain.  It stopped in the middle of the night and in the morning, we had the hassle of getting everyone ready for school (busses not cancelled that day) without power.  It meant me having to wash the teenager's hair in the sink, and forego my morning cup of tea.  Sean and Evie made do with fruit for breakfast and I got myself something later, as the other end of town was fully functioning.

Power came back that morning, then went out again for the better part of the day.  Bob hooked up a generator (to much cursing and swearing, the usual) and shortly after he got that going, of course, the power came back on.  Well we weren't going to complain.  Then it went out again the following day for a couple of hours.  Hopefully we'll be good now for awhile.

The fun part of all this of course was the fact that there was now enough snow for sledding.  The temperature dropped like crazy on the weekend, (-16 C daytime), but Skyler and Sean got me and Evie out anyways.

This one shows Miss Evie enjoying her own solo sledding endeavor.  Last year she was not so interested but now, getting snow in her face is just par for the course, and she is thrilled to go down the hill on her own!

Playing with the snow on our way back home.  It was very cute on the day the snow arrived, because Evie was right out there with her tongue out, catching flakes!  She also makes a pretty darned good snow angel.

I enjoyed my time out with the kids (sorry, pics of the others keep coming out sideways on this blog today, and I can't seem to fix it), definitely a refreshing experience in those temps!  Brrrr!