The White White House: The BIG Winter Storm

The big storm hit us on Wednesday. I picked Jackson up from tutor and the snow began falling around noon, just as we were heading home. It was only a few minutes before the flakes began sticking to walkways. I called Holly and Laura to check on them; they were picking up the kids from school. What happened within the next few hours was total madness. So many people in the area were trying to get home at the same time so going just a few miles was taking hours. Some people resorted to leaving their vehicles in and around the roadways. Thank goodness that wasn't the case for my sisters. They were both on the roads for more than two hours but they eventually made it home, safely.

We watched the snow fall Wednesday and it was beautiful. We'd heard so much about this storm so I tried to prepare for the worst; The pantry and cupboards were stocked, I cooked two meals and had the crockpot going early, just in case we were to lose power. I was hoping that WOULD NOT be the case. Well....unfortunately, I was awakened around 3 AM by the sounds of a beeping cordless phone and smoke detector. This was not a good sign. This meant that we lost power! Webb got up and went downstairs to take charge of the situation, well, as much taking charge as he could. Honestly, I was very appreciative because that meant that I got to sleep. While Webb reported the outage and did whatever else (maybe listened to the news, fixed the beeping in the smoke detector, or whatever else he did, Jackson comes to my room and climbs in the warm bed with me and Sawyer, who joined me earlier in the night. We managed to stay warm and caught a few more hours of decent sleep. Of course my mind was racing for the first hour with thoughts of dread to what I might wake to. Was the entire area without power? I had a flashback to the winter storm we experienced when Jackson was a baby. We were without power for days and it was oh so cold. I was hoping that it wasn't going to be that bad. My mind was also racing with ideas of how I was going to make my morning coffee and "hot chocolate" (hot almond milk) for Sawyer. Eventually, I relaxed and trusted that Webb was taking care of things, since he never returned to bed. At 7 something, I awoke to the sound of our neighbor's loud generator. Maybe he would make me a cup of coffee? Soon after, Webb decided to venture out to see where the line was down. He found it and happily reported that the crews were working on it. Meanwhile, he decided to go to a McDonald's that was open in Cary, and returned with coffee, hot chocolate and biscuits. The morning was getting a lot better. Fortunately, the power was back on around 9:30, just a few minutes after he returned home. Woohoo! As soon as the caffeine and biscuits kicked in, we put on our snow gear and headed out to play. We had a few hours of fun until the rain, yes, rain fell. Snow is fun but rain in the snow isn't fun. More snow fell in the afternoon so we headed back out in the evening for snowball fights. We took another "snow day" today (Friday) and enjoyed a little more sledding, four-wheeling, and snowboarding. The sun came out and it was a lovely sight. It turned out to be a beautiful Valentine's Day with a little snow and plenty of sunshine.

We've had fun and I think we've gotten our fill of snow this winter. I am thankful for the good times and the memories that we've made. And to top it all off, 70's are in the forecast for next week. I'm dreaming of the beach now and devising a plan to get there soon:-)