Oh dear!

Well, we had our Christmas music playing on the stereo and the kids were all wearing red, fur-trimmed "Ho-Ho" hats (as they all three call them!) and the entire family was trimming the tree and decorating the house when all at once it went silent and pitch black! Yesterday, the weather was balmy as Springtime...today it turned frigid and there was already an inch of sleet accumulated on our back deck before Grant got home from work. There is 12 inches of snow predicted for tonight after all the ice has come. As our electricity went out Grant said, "Oh no. Hope this isn't like 2001." The ice storm of 2001 left our rural (all electric) home without electricity for six frigid nights and seven days....no hot water, no heat....we ran around in multiple layers of clothing watching our own breath in our home that was 30 degrees during the daytime (who knows what it was at night while we all huddled together in a communal bed and tried to keep warm)! All over our yard and land, trees snapped and were toppled completely by the weight of the ice upon them. I remember we would sit in the house and hear sounds like cannons being shot off and realize that was the sound of huge trees crashing to the ground all around us.

Here we go again, I suspect! Should have stocked our cupboards better and had more batteries on hand...and a propane powered heater would have been nice! Oh well! At least my computer battery is fully charged and our phone lines are still open!

Darcy and Grant are in the living room now picking music together...twin mandolins!...Christmas carols! Back to a simpler time!