*the blizzard

So we had a nice welcome-to-New-England blizzard last weekend.  There was a lot of hype leading up to it - literally all they were talking about on the news in the days proceeding. Apparently there was a huge blizzard in '78 that caught people off guard and caused a lot of damage and injury. So they were taking no chances with this one.  With all the excitement and school cancellations, executive orders to stay off the roads, I totally thought it would turn out to be nothing. It did, however, meet expectations!!  Friday night was fun and cozy - watching the storm build from inside our warm apartment.  I would have liked to watch the peak of the storm, the true whiteout, but it was in the middle of the night.  I imagined Pa attaching a rope between the house and the barn - the family waiting anxiously for him to come back :)

 The part that wasn't fun was the power outage - I completely didn't anticipate that! I was excited to hunker down the next day, sipping tea and cocoa, making valentines and watching movies - chicken noodle soup for dinner.  The power went out about 10:30 Friday night and turned on about 24 hours later.  So Saturday was quite cold - and still pretty windy and snowy outside.  The girls were actually ok - playing and coloring most the day.  I was totally miserable - cold and tired. I think something was out of whack with my hormones or iron or something because I couldn't keep my eyes open. I tried reading to them and I could barely stay awake. At one point Edie was pretending to put me to bed in hers and I actually had a dream!  All I could think about was coffee or mate - how badly I wanted it.  There's my complaining, I'm done :)  Ben went out some and dug out the car, went over to the student commons where they were serving warm food prepared on the grill.  He also put some of our frozen food outside - some haagen dasz and rotisserie chicken that I'd frozen the day before.  Unfortunately it was later covered by a mountain of snow from the plow and is most definitely lost, haha.   

Anyway, we did finally all get out of the house around 5pm because it was dark inside and the girls were getting restless [Edie was very upset that I couldn't turn the light on!]  I tried calling family members to see if they could google something that was open, but no one answered, so we just drove.  It was kind of eerie with few lights on and just so much snow. Thankfully we came upon a Chinese restaurant that was open and had a nice hot meal.  We went to bed quickly, thankful also for our good down comforters.  When the power went on later that night we could hear rejoicing shouts outside :)

 Anyway, here's some pictures...

friday morning: 

 4ish when the wind started picking up:

 the next morning:

I realize this isn't the most snow ever to fall on the Earth - I mean I've lived in Nevada, Utah and Montana and have experienced big storms before. And of course have several of you readers here from Alaska!  Once I remember a big blizzard while we were in Mammoth - there was even thunder and lightning [we did see a few flashes here this time] and they closed the whole mountain down.  So 30" isn't a lot of snow when you are in Park City or Mammoth, but it is when you are in a city with millions of people and narrow roads and just little place to put all that snow!  It was crazy too watching the news reports of the winds and waves [15'-20'] on the shore.

Ben took this picture looking for parking at the church we tried out on Sunday.  We did make it about 45 minutes late and shivered through the service in 43 degrees!

Anyway, that's my account of the blizzard of 2013 :)