Winter Wonderland

(Written on Friday, Dec. 6)

The school actually announce last night that it would not be open today. I always appreciate that, even though I normally don't sleep in.

I awoke several times during the night last night. The ice pounding on the windows sounded like it was in the room with us. I finally got up at the normal time and watched the weather reports that were coming in.

Ice started around midnight and continued until 8 or 9 this morning. Then the snow began. It is finally tapering off now, around 2 pm.

I finished the remaining 5 beach towels around 2:30. When, all of the sudden I heard a crash. I knew immediately what it was.  I heard that sound before. A tree falling. And, yes, that's right. The electricity went out immediately.  Yep, it caught the electric line and snapped the pole in two.

We called the city and they responded within an hour, only to tell us that the pole was our property and they couldn't repair it for us. It is our responsibility to get a new pole put in and call a certified electrician to put in the new electrical box, etc.

Our brother-in-law came with his tractor to help get the old pole out of the hole. He also bladed our driveway for us. Thanks so much, Randy.

So here is Larry working on getting a new pole put in.

That was on a Saturday. We hoped the electrician would get there on Monday, but he didn't. He finally got everything hooked up on Tuesday and we turned the power back on around 4 p.m.

We heated the kitchen, den, and a bathroom using a wood stove. I just closed off all other doors and put a curtain up between the kitchen and dining/living area. We stayed nice and toasty, but the rest of the house was around 46 degrees. Brrr!

I am so thankful that we had water the whole time. We heated water on the wood stove for baths and cooked on a camp stove. We did have to get some wood from our brother-in-law and visit Walmart on Tuesday morning for more propane bottles for the lantern and camp stove; but otherwise, we were pretty well prepared.

We also have a small generator that we ran for a couple of hours each day to keep our frozen foods from thawing. 

We have plenty of propane bottles put back for the next time we are out of electricity. But, we do plan to purchase another lantern to keep on hand. They put out so much more light than the kerosene lamps.

Happy snipping, stitching, and quilting!