Vomit, Tooth and Ice...in that order.

The Past 2 Weeks In review:

#1-We all got the stomach bug. Lou started it all. Passed it to me. And Brooklyn. Then Tim. Somehow Natty and Dallin evaded it, which still baffles me. Dallin's usually the "sick one". Maybe Kindergarten has given him additional immunity? I'm not complaining!

#2:

Need I say more?! The Tooth Fairy even had cash this time.

#3- "The Storm"

I'm sure everyone's aware of this and I know to all of our local friends, this is old news, but eventually I'll have this blog printed out, so I wanted documentation. So bear with me, or skip it :)
Monday morning we woke up to snow dust- maybe 1/2 an inch at best. School was canceled. Tuesday morning, however, we were hit with 4-5 inches of wonderful fluffy snow- the good kind to build snow men with. But then the freezing rain came all through the night and at 6:30 on Wednesday morning we heard the electricity shut off entirely.

The first thing Tim said was, "We should have bought a generator." After the wind storms that Ike brought through, we had debated doing it and decided we'd wait "just a little bit longer". Bad, stupid, poor choice. So immediately Tim and I got up and showered before the hot water went out. We started calling around (luckily our cell phones were never affected, which was a blessing) at about 9 o'clock to see if we could find a generator. Naturally, they were all sold out.

Tim decided to brave the roads and drive 20 minutes to Lowes to see if he could get a heat source for us. When he got there, he found 1 of 3 propane heaters left. As soon as he picked it up, another couple came and grabbed the last two. (another blessing)

He came home to see us all bundled in our winter gear because the house had already gotten around 55 and it was freezing. He set up the heater in our dining room and lou-lou was ready for summer- this was one of her more modest outfits of the day:
I was really wishing for a wood burning fireplace at that point because propane-flavored smores just don't do it for me.

We had some good friends stay with us that night because they didn't have any heat or electricity either. It was genuinely fun (for me, at least)! Eating dinner by candle light (which we were able to heat on our gas stove- another blessing), watching the kids play games in the basement with flashlights, Natty reading a story to them by candlelight- and it was heavenly not having the TV or computer to contend with. Although the dead-silence with no appliances running was a little unnerving. After we'd gone to bed, at 10:30 that night, we were all awakened by bright lights and bathroom fans. (another blessing) We were some of the first in our city to get our heat and electricity back.

Here are some of the pictures I took. I wasn't able to get any shots of the real damage around here- it genuinely looked like a war zone- huge trees toppled with the amount of ice build-up, full trees and massive branches falling on power lines, onto houses, across driveways, trees and branches bent so they were almost touching the ground, etc. We didn't deal with anything that extreme, but a couple of our big trees took a hit-

Before: (notice the ice pond on our driveway and around the tree seeing as you can't see much of the tree)


After: you get a good comparison with the trees on the right especially, but the tree on the left lost more branches.


It was so hard to believe something could be so tragically beautiful.






as I said, we were the lucky ones. There are still so many without power, without heat, without housing. Please keep them in your prayers.

46 more days until Spring.

But who's counting? :)