The Storm

 Last week I found out that we were going to get "some snow" this week.  "Some snow" is usually predicted as being a few inches and then turns out to only be enough to say "It's snowing!" on facebook just as the last flake falls.

That's not what happened.  At all.

It snowed for 3 hours on Tuesday.  We went and picked up Lily early from school.

Then yesterday around lunchtime it was supposed to start snowing again.  The kids were already bored and so for some reason I let them do this:

Did I make your eyes explode?  No?  Well good morning, because I know you're awake now.

Lily obviously has kept some skills secret these 5 years.

We ended up getting about 5 inches of snow before the freezing rain started and went through the night.  And any time you know freezing rain is coming, you know the likelihood of your power going out is high.

At 3 AM today Ben woke me up to tell me the power was out.  It's a good thing we brought everything in from the garage and attic so we could conserve our heat.  We turned on the fireplace and our kerosene heater.  We hung up these blankets so that we only had to warm our living room/kitchen area.  By 8 AM our power was restored (and only went out for an hour after that).  We were the luckiest in our neighborhood.  Most everyone had their power out for a better part of the day.

 When I was checking on things outside I discovered that a little bunny had taken shelter under Ben's car.  So of course I had to bring it some food.

 We were really fortunate that we didn't have any pines snap.  We lost quite a few branches but none of them hit the house.  

I also heard that we're going to get another wave of snow tomorrow night.  Yay....

Every new season Ben always complains that I always say, "It's not a normal winter/spring/summer/fall."  After today I said, "Okay, this is a normal winter now."  We may not get an ice storm like this every single year, but it's definitely normal.  The stores running out of groceries, people taking multiple hours to drive a mile, school being out for several days in a row, I make dozens of cookies in preparation for a power outage... all normal.

And just as importantly, when the sun came up and we were able to see our ice covered world for the first time.  Lily looked at me and asked, "Mom, is Elsa from Frozen in our world?"