Lights, Camera, Action! (a.k.a. The Blizzard of '10)

As I am sure everyone who reads my blog who lives anywhere close to here knows, it snowed. A lot. I thought we were supposed to get about a foot, which around here usually means we end up with 2 inches. Panic set in to most citizens around here and they all ran to the store to get milk and toilet paper. I did not. Let it snow. All I had to do this weekend was catch up on laundry and vacuum. Neither of those activities ever got completed. It is amazing how much your life is affected when you are without power for 53 hours.

It started snowing around noon on Friday. I didn't pay too much attention to it, just casually watched it accumulate out the window. It snowed constantly but never really seemed to be coming down that heavy. I took the pup out for a walk around 8 pm and we had probably 8 inches. At 9:45 the power went out. I am always thoroughly confused when our power goes out during storms here since all the power lines in this neighborhood are underground. Greg called the power company and a recording told him that power for our area should be restored by 11 pm. We made sure the wood burning stove in the basement was full of wood, threw a spare blanket on the kids, and went to bed.

We woke up Saturday morning to find that the weather prediction was a bit off. Instead of 12 inches of snow, we got nearly 2 feet! My inaccurate measurement of the snow clocked in at 22.5 inches. It was one of those "wet" snows that stuck to everything, pulled down trees and power lines. I put all my snow gear on and took the pup out for a walk. My oh so generous neighbor had plowed our driveway the night before so there was only about a foot a snow on the driveway. Maya made a mad dash into the fresh powder and all but disappeared.



Our house is a little ways from the road. The pup usually isn't on a leash in our yard but I can still only trust her to come when I call about 80% of the time. I wanted to check out the road and didn't have a leash for Maya. I figured I would risk it. There was no one at all around. The township hadn't been out to plow our roads yet but someone took it upon themselves to do a little plowing. If I turned left out of my driveway, things were looking pretty nice. Whoever had done the plowing apparently couldn't make it the rest of the way up the hill because right after my driveway, there was a wall of snow where the plow stopped.


And just because we could, the pup and I headed up the street a little bit and played in the snow in the middle of a three way intersection.


Back in our yard, I thought we should stop and have a little swing... but that didn't work out so well.


Please take your time and enjoy the following few pictures because my short legs had to climb through the massive amounts of snow up a hill to get these pictures. It was rather exhausting.

Weeping Willow Tree was weeping despite its lack of leaves






Check out all the snow on the swings.


Despite (my) fears that our back porch roof might collapse since it is almost flat,

the only damage that we noticed was that part of the garden fence fell down. The fence ripped away from the support poles so it is just a matter of attaching it again.


Still without power, we attempted to go on with our day normally. Greg made coffee.

The kids seemed very understanding of the fact that our TV was "broken". We all goofed around together and I found myself savoring life without the distraction of television and checking email and catching up on blog reading/writing and doing that laundry and vacuuming that really needed done. Perhaps that is why I like camping so much. The only things we had to worry about was staying fed, warm, and enjoying the time we have to spend together.

Mid-morning time we headed outdoors. The kids could hardly wait. Marcus went down the first two steps of our front porch and jumped into the snow. He disappeared face first and came up screaming. Being the awesome mother I am, I was laughing hysterically. Maya helped us out by bounding through the snow and packing down a few paths. The kids were content digging and digging some more. They weren't all that happy when we requested they try to walk. I wonder why.




By evening, the temperature on the main floor of the house had become close to unbearable. Our game room was still somewhat toasty. Just to be clear, "game room" is quite an overstatement. This is no nice looking "man cave". It really is just a basement - concrete floors with an area rug on one part, cinder block walls on three sides, some Styrofoam insulation and wood studs on the fourth wall, a ceiling that consists of exposed pipes and duct work. There is one window that lets in a little light, a couple of couches for comfort, and a spare bed. Most importantly, our wood burning stove that became our mode of survival is located down there. We began our decent into the game room.

My parents live a couple miles away and their house still had power so we headed over there for warm showers and a warm meal. After we sucked up their hospitality, we headed back to our house. The main floor of the house was 53 degrees. The game room was cool but definitely tolerable. We decided to "go camping" downstairs. The kids were on air mattresses and Greg and I (and sometimes Maya) were on the spare bed.
(That's Marcus, not the Old Mother Witch book with arms)




Greg, Marcus, and I experienced a lengthy power outage in the summer of 2007 that was the result of some micro bursts (tornado like things) that occurred near our old house. In addition to extensive water damage to our basement, we also lost all our food in our freezer. That wasn't a problem this time around.

I guess that is one advantage to being without power in the middle of near zero temperatures. I told the kids that we were going to put our food outside. Marcus was a bit worried and shouted out, "We can't Mommy! The deer will eat it!" Thankfully there are no flying deer in the area that were able to make it up to our deck.

Sunday we woke up to find we still did not have electricity. We attempted to eat breakfast upstairs with coats on and decided that all meals from that point on would be consumed in the basement.

Marcus and I spent some quality time together washing dishes (in cold water) by hand.

There was more playing in the snow. There was some cuddling time with the pup.

As much as we were enjoying all the quality time we were getting to spend together as a family, it was apparent that we were all done with the cold and dark world that was void of technology. My parents took us in for another evening of dinner and showers and we spent a second evening camping out in our basement.

At 2:45 this morning, I was awaken by something quite mysterious. It was a light not produced by fire or battery power. At last! We endured 53 hours of power outage and came out of it only slightly dirty, mildly cold, and with no frozen pipes. We did have to throw out some of our milk since I am convinced the inside of our refridgerator was actually warmer than our house at one point. Although I am in no hurry to do it all again, I have to admit that getting to spend all that time just being together will be something I will miss. Got to run. Got to pick up some milk and toilet paper at the store. Another storm that is projected to drop 12 more inches of snow is supposed to hit tomorrow. Keeping my fingers crossed that this time 12 inches actually turns out to be 2 inches instead of 2 feet.