The Ice Storm

This day was crazy.  I've never seen an ice strom before and when we woke up this morning there was a thick layer of ice on everything.  The power lines had a layer as thick as these plants.  The weight of the ice eventually caused some of our tree branches to break off and when it started to melt the ice made huge crashing noises as it fell onto our roof and yard.  Despite how crazy dangerous it was it was really quite beautiful.  It was so still that morning and everything was shimmering.  Our front yard looked like an ice rink (not that we tried it out) and our care was also covered in about 1/4 inch layer of ice.

These flowers were some of the strangest of what I saw.  I'm not sure what kind they were but they looked almost like a daisy and the ice balled up on the end of them until there was more ice there than flower.  It's pretty amazing that such a phenomenon exists. 

There was one snap dragon plant (yes I still have snap dragons in January, crazy, I know) that had some blossoms on it and it looked so strange cased in ice.

I guess the lesson in this one is to enjoy the beauty even in the craziest of circumstances.  As a cause of the ice storm over 200,000 people lost power and some were out for as long as five days.  Many are still cleaning up fallen trees and branches from their property and Matt said the wood recycling place had a long line when he went on Saturday.  Me, I'm just glad to have power again and am appreciating it a little more.

Weathering the Storm

Our area was hit by snow, ice, wind and rain last week and we were out of power for four days.  We spent most of that time at my uncle's house which was really fun.  On top of the weather issues I had a bad stomach flu that held on forever.  It's been nice to get back to "normal" at our house though I throughly enjoyed having a change of scenery for a few days.  A big thanks to all the friends and family that checked up on us and those who helped out with the yard clean up from the tree branches that fell from our trees.  I have some amazing pictures from the ice storm but will have to get my camera back before I can share them.

A Little Help

My little one is to that age where they want to "help" with everything.  This often ends in a mess.

This particular day I was making some chocolate covered marshmallows.  My little one wanted to help and not only that, he wanted "puppy" to help too.  Puppy ended up tucked into the strap of the overalls where he could see everything that was happening.  The small one was thrilled that he could help and even more excited that he didn't have to let that puppy out of his site in order to do so.  And there wasn't even much more mess to clean up afterward that normal.  Here's to more adventures "helping."