A Blackout On Our Whiteout

 Well, it's been an interesting day over here!  Let's start at the beginning ...

Look what we woke up to!

Whooooooeeeee!  Around 18 inches dropped onto our neck of the woods last night.

It wasn't really a heavy snow, but there was a ton of it and the wind has been blowing something fierce all day and it made it difficult to clear.  Our tractor/plow is getting fixed, so my mom called someone in to plow for us.

We still had about an inch or two to shovel, but one or two is much more manageable than 18!

I heated up leftover pancakes for breakfast this morning before the shoveling commenced.

And topped them with this!  My dad gave this to Bruce and me an oh my.  I may never go back to Aunt Jemima again.

I love how the steam is coming off my coffee in this photo.  I have no idea how I did that.

There was lots of coffee flowing in our house this morning.

He kind of got a kick out of the whole thing.  Really, I think he just wanted to play.

Unfortunately, we didn't have a sled. :( But the day went on ...

Post-shoveling, I was working on a blog post when my computer screen got a little bit darker.  The power had gone out!  I was hoping that it would be a quick fix, but unfortunately we only now just got it back.  9 1/2 hours without power!  No power = no water (we have a well, not city water) and no power = no heat (the electricity powers the furnace).  I feel like I've been roughing it at all day!

Since we didn't have power, we decided to meander down to some friends of ours in the neighborhood who had been on vacation to see if they had gotten back.  From the looks of their driveway (or their lack of driveway) we saw that they weren't home yet, so we meandered down to see some other friends who we knew had their key.

Can I take a moment and say how much I love living in a neighborhood again where I know and love my neighbors?

Once we got the key, we went back to the vacationing friends' house and Bruce fired up their snowblower and I grabbed a shovel and we cleared their driveway and back deck.  It was actually kind of fun and a great upper body workout, ha!

I was hoping when we returned the keys, we would be met with good news that the power was back on, but no such luck.  So we came home and made hot chocolate in the fireplace!

Bruce's camping supplies.

We actually didn't have a fire lit at the time, so Bruce just used a mini grill, but kept everything in the fireplace to keep it contained.

It's boiling!

Swiss Miss.  Stolen from my parents pantry (hi Daddy!).

Oh man.  After shoveling allllll morning and afternoon, that hit the spot.

Now at that point, we really didn't know what to do.  The power had been out for about three hours, but the power company didn't have an ETA for when it was coming back.  We couldn't cook, so we thought about going up to my parent's house, but the sun was quickly setting and knew it wouldn't be safe to drive home after it got dark.  We thought about spending the night there, but didn't want to leave Lilly at home with no heat and didn't want to subject my poor only-child cat to the zoo at my parent's house.

So I called the local pizza and praise-the-lord they had running generators!  One large pizza with mushrooms and onions, coming our way ...

Bruce (very carefully and in my mom's AWD outback that she let us borrow for a few days) drove down to get the pizza while I took a candle into our guest room and found a bunch of extra blankets.

Collages to show you that I did try to do things without a flash.  It just wasn't going to happen.

At this point we were staving because we had cleared two driveways (one of three inches, one of 18) and had only eaten two pancakes.  Well, I had eaten two pancakes, Bruce had only drank tea all day!  So we scarfed this entire pizza down and then happily curled up in front of the fire.

 These candles are leftover from my wedding 18 months ago.  True story.

Eventually we got a game of scrabble going.  I'm not sure who won - we kind of backed ourselves into a corner and eventually got bored.  As much as I am normally glued to my computer, the lack of connection was - dare I say? - peaceful today.  It was fun to just sit back and enjoy the simple things.

Okay, time to wrap this up - we moved all of our food out onto the porch so it wouldn't spoil in the fridge (it's 20 degrees outside!) so I need to bring that back in before I fall asleep and the raccoons decide to make it their dinner.  As annoying as it was to have no power, I am grateful that it happened during a time of year when we could keep all the food cold, for lot of blankets that kept me warm and a sweet husband who slaved over a fire all night.

Goodnight everyone!