Ice Storm 2009

You can kinda see the icecicles hanging off of the roof, and all of the ice on the foliage.

Backyard...icecicles up top and a tree from a neighbor's yard bending over our fence.

Front flower bed

Our neighbors across the street. Those bushes used to cover the windows and chimney. They hang low with the weight of the ice. The trees in the background can lose branches at any moment.

Down our street to the left

Our next door neighbors' tree before...

and after!

The contents of our freezer on the back porch. With the power out, we didn't want our fridge and freezer food to go bad. The food from the fridge went into the garage.

I don't know how many of you follow weather around the nation, but over the last few days, we here in NW Arkansas have been hit with a pretty awful ice storm! This week started out very eventfully, before the ice even came. I got hit with the stomach flu on Sunday night, and was completely out of commission for nearly all of Monday. Luckily, Aaron did not get sick, and even though Alec threw up once, I'm not calling it what I had, and both babies did well throughout the day. Daddy was able to stay home and take care of them, while I was relegated to my bed and the bathroom for 24 hours.

In the wake of that misery finally passing over us, in came the ice. It started Monday night, and by Tuesday morning pretty much everything was glazed over with a pretty good covering of it. We lost power at 8am and didn't get it back until 3pm. We have a gas fireplace and water heater, thank the good Lord...so we were able to have warm water for bottles, showers, and also heat for the house because of the fireplace. I wasn't convinced that the power would stay on because we were still getting pelted with freezing rain, sleet and snow up through 6am this morning. Again, God was gracious, because we were able to get dinner made, the twins bathed and in bed, before the power went out again at around 8:30pm last night.

For those of you who don't live in the Arctic Tundra (I realize that this is a very hyperbolic statement, but for two native Texans...this is about all we can stand), the power goes out because all of the ice that covers trees and power lines causes the trees to snap and fall into the power lines or the lines themselves to go down. We were able to stay in the house overnight last night, even without power, because the fireplace was keeping the living room and into the nursery around 70 degrees. Aaron and I camped out in the living room, and the babies were happy in their cribs as usual.

Today we ventured out around 12:30 this afternoon to go to our friend Melissa's house because she has power. Aaron wanted to try to log in to work from there and we wanted to warm up some food...and just to get out into the land of the living. The drive was crazy. The roads were driveable, but it was just amazing seeing all of the trees and branches down, power lines down, and ice ice ice...as far as the eye could see. We came back home around 4pm to a house with power. Yay! I'm posting some pictures of all of the ice...so check them out and be grateful if you are not dealing with this kind of winter storm!!!