"I Need More Power!"... "I'm Giving Her All She's Got, Cap'n!"

Admiral relaxing pre-snow storm. Shoveling a path to the wood pile.

Cows belly-deep in snow.

Sam & I took a walk to check the fence rows for downed trees. That's the house waaaaaay down the hill. Snow was usually up to our knees, sometimes up to mid-thigh. Sam was the champion of complaining. I'm too hot. I'm too cold. I'm simultaneously too hot and too cold. The snow is too white. We started trying to think of the most ridiculous complaints he could use and just decided that he'd save time by just grumbling "Complain, complain, complain." in lieu of specific things.

He asked, "Have you tasted the snow yet?" as he took a sample from the ground. Of course I already had, but I said that it was from down on the porch. That had us off on our advertising spiel for all the different flavored snows we could offer. Woodland Flavored, Porch Flavored, Fencepost flavored. So many delicious options.

And then I flung myself backwards, arms wide.

I even convinced Professor Whiny to try it. He agreed that it was one of the most comfortable tempur-pedic-like beds he'd every fallen into. We laughed at our body prints in the snow. Our tiny heads and big bodies.
I said, "Let me take a picture showing how deep the snow is." Pretty deep, huh? Just kidding, he's on his knees.

Relaxing in a pile.

This is normally a lovely path in the woods. All blocked by bent over trees.On our way back home. The horses way off in the distance wondering who's in their pasture field.

And then after nearly 24 hours of straight snow, the sun came out.

My Nikki.

Lily came out and said, "I want to show you a trick Sam showed me." I already knew what the trick was: free-falling with your arms outstretched into the deep snow. I let her show me and then said, "And who do you think showed that trick to Sam? Girl, I invented that trick!"

The birds were all very busy with their suet. They barely minded us being there.

They were so cute and pretty.Or 'handsome' is probably more accurate.Check out the snow on these bee hives.

Caught ya!

The final tally: 18 inches.

Tonight's blog post courtesy of our brand new generator!

Power went out last night shortly after midnight. Having no power could be very disasterous for us here since our heat source is an outdoor wood-fired boiler which requires electicity to run the water pump and blower fan. There is so much plumbing here that can't freeze. So much.

We called the electric company hotline and they predicted we'd have power at 5am. Five hours without juice: no sweat. (Literally, no sweating. It was 55 degrees in here this morning.)

But the snow was nowhere near being done. There were 12+ hours more of snowfall forecast. And we figured it was going to take a bit longer for the power to come back on.

The plan was, wake up at 6 to see if we were back online, and if not, rush into town to buy a generator, hoping hundreds of other folks hadn't thought the same thing.

Long story short, we dug ourselves out early this morning and were in line outside Lowe's with about half a dozen other poor souls waiting for them to open so we could buy a generator.

Mark snapped up on 1 of 2 on the shelf before anyone had a chance to blink and we headed home with our prize.

So not only are we relieved, we agreed we're basically living in the lap of luxury here with our running water and heat.

And internet.