White Christmas

Oh my gosh - there is so much to talk about!! This was a Christmas we won't ever forget - for a number of reasons! Lets just start with the weather... I know that I posted quite a few snow pictures earlier, but things got so much crazier! So here is a picture of what our little house looked like.

So, there are a few things to notice here. #1 -if you look just to the right of the house, you can see BJs truck - hidden behind the little tree that typically stands in the corner of our driveway! It was so coated with ice, that it was bent over to the ground. BJ has it ratcheted up now, and it is attempting to right itself. You can see in the picture below how much ice was coated on the leaves!!The other thing to look at in the picture of the house is the boughs of the fir trees - they are so laden with ice that they are dragging off of the trees. The tops of some of our firs were really sagging - apparently those are called "widow makers". SCARY. Here is a picture of the ice crusted onto a fir bough.

BJ had me stand on the front porch to experience what an ice storm really does. It was eerily quiet, because no one was driving, so there was no car noise. But every couple of minutes you would here a "CRACK - CRASH!" as a branch broke out of a tree, or an entire tree fell on the hillside behind our house. We saw one tree fall and take out two others at the same time. I have never experienced anything like it - who knew that cold weather could be so dangerous!! We had in some cases over an inch of ice frozen on any surfaces. BJ drove one evening, and the antenna of his truck froze while it was bent over in the wind - it was frozen in an arc! Here are a couple of really cool pictures that show you just how much ice we are talking about here!

We were lucky that we didn't end up with any more damage than we did - but we have quite a bit of cleanup to do! Twigs and branches everywhere, and 2 large trees that uprooted in our side yard, taking out our fence...

And just a few more pictures to show some of the damage on the road up to my father in law's house - where we had to camp out for a few days while our power was out.

We certainly did try to make the most of things, being cooped up in the house was an easy way to get cabin fever. Here is just one of the ways that the guys passed the time... :) They got a kick out of this swizel stick...

Just thought I'd try to illustrate how crazy things were! Thank goodness today, most everything is melted off. The car took to the road today for the first time in 2 weeks. I hope that we don't see anything quite so extreme again anytime soon!