First non-snowday snowday!

So… eLearning. That’s what day the kids get now if we get bad weather. Bummer for them now…but one less day they have to go in June.

Katie (and Owen) had all their work done by 11:30!

We took the kids out for lunch because the weather wasn’t that bad…but it was starting to get slippery by the time lunch was over. And then I came back home to my book and my chair and my dogs.

Katie and the snow.

We got a bit more snow than I thought—-this is not then we’ve had all season thus far. Tom also realized he needs a bigger snowblower—-it was so deep it took him about two hours to clear the driveway and sidewalks!

She built a seat and drink holder on the side of the driveway. She also built a slide.

Not pictured: the mini snowman and the grave of the snowman that didn’t survive. I give her major points for creativity!

Not quite a lazy day.

So I knew when I woke up this morning that something was different about today because our room had a really distinct bright white light in it…which can only mean that there was snow outside on the ground. WHAT THE F, MOTHER NATURE?! Then Katie came in all excited because she thought today was going to be a lazy day—apparently she thought that since LAST Friday was a lazy day that THIS Friday was a lazy day, not realizing that last Friday was a holiday.

“BUT THERE’S SNOW OUTSIDE….” she whined.

“Yes, and in regular times, you’d still be going to school.”

I did agree that today should be a LAZIER day (because my ulterior motive was me not getting out of bed at all!)

So here it is 1pm and I just got out of bed to put my mask on and then I crawled back into bed.

I put up our Christmas light last night!

There was a mini movement on Facebook too put up holiday lights and decorations (any holiday) in order to break up the boredom and monotony and give people something to look at when they’re driving by. I’m all about the Christmas lights so Tom dug ours out and I put it up last night.

And look what’s happening now?! 😒 SERIOUSLY.

Tubing with the fam!

We all went tubing today at Hanson Hills!! I had never done it before but I am all about NOT having to walk up the hill!! I hadn’t been inside the building in probably 25 years…plus they’ve totally updated it…so how can it still smell exactly the same?!

Tubing was so much fun…but everyone else in Grayling had the same idea and there were too many people (IMO) so we only got three runs in! It only took about 10 minutes max to ride up and go down but they’re were so many people we were waiting 15 minutes in line. (The tow rope also broke for about 15 minutes—THANKS, MARIE!—so that didn’t help.)

Katie only went down twice—she got too freaked out that she was going to come out of the tube. I could actually understand—you really got going fast and I was initially a bit freaked out. I went down once with Owen, once with Tom, and then the last trip with Tom, Owen, Doug, and Robert!

Thanks to Gramma Jean for taking pics with my phone!!

Damn Illinois weather. I’m DONE with snow.

What’s the first thing you think when you see this picture? CERTAINLY NOT THE FACT THAT IT’S MID-APRIL (just guessing). I should be used to Mother Nature’s cruel tricks having grown up in Northern Michigan (Grayling, Michigan to be exact)…but after having lived in multiple WARMER places over the past 18 years, I just can’t stand snow anymore. I’ll allow it (😂) around Christmas (because I’ve done Christmas in flip flops with the A/C on and while I like the novelty it didn’t feel like Christmas at all) but anything beyond New Year’s (okay, maaaaaybe Valentine’s Day) is pushing it. But MID-APRIL is, well, insanity.

So basically what this snow means to me is 1) I’m listening to Christmas music🎄🎶 and 2) our decision to retire somewhere with 99% less snow is now 100% certain.

Blizzard!

They were predicting a blizzard Sunday night but we didn’t believe them.

And then it started snowing thick, wet heavy snow.

And then the kids went to bed.

And then school was cancelled Sunday evening.

And then Tom got the call he had a late start.

And then the power flicked off and on about four times over an hour.

And then it went off for good about midnight. Hoo boy.

Katie woke up during one of the brief outages because the backup power supplies were beeping and we were running around trying to turn things off… So we told her there was no school and she could sleep in…and that daddy would be here in the morning.

The power was still off in the morning so Tom built a fire in the fireplace and it did a decent job of keeping the living room comfortable (70°). Unfortunately the fireplace is meant for looks and not heating so the flue doesn’t really work so the fire burns fast and hot and we went through wood like crazy (thankfully we had lots of wood from the free stuff I got this summer). We assumed that everyone was without power, but all our friends had power. Turns out, there were about 250,000 people in the greater metro area that lost power!

I hadn’t seen snow this heavy and wet in a long time—these bushes are normally chest-high and completely away from the sidewalk. This morning? About knee-high and covering most of the sidewalk!

The kids played outside most of the day with friends…moving from yard to yard and house to house. They had to dry their snow gear in front of the fire.

Katie kept trying to use things that needed electricity and wondering why they didn’t work. I cooked on the gas stove. As time wore on, we eventually brought out a cooler to put some of the refrigerator stuff in outside since it was getting warm. (It was freezing outside so the stuff would be just right in a cooler.) The freezers were okay because we hadn’t opened them.

The day wasn’t too bad while it was light out—there was lots of animal cuddling warmth—

but then once it got dark (at 4pm!) we had to go pull out all our candles!

We kept checking our power status on the website and this is the only thing we saw all day:

It was frustrating. But I was glad I was still able to use my phone and stay connected. (Using Low Power Mode and turning the Brightness way down reaaaaally conserves battery life. Plus I used one of our external battery packs.)

You know the animals are desperate for attention (or warmth) when they cuddle together on me. Usually it’s one or the other because one kicks the other one out.

At bedtime it was a chilly 52° upstairs so we got out lots of extra blankets and sent the kids to bed a little early. A friend invited us to her house the following day if the power didn’t come back on. Just as we were getting into bed under our six layers (and me in top and bottom long johns, pants, and a hoodie—complete with the hood up!) the power came back on about 9:30! So we had a mad dash throughout the house to make sure everything was turned off (somehow both of Owen’s bedroom lights were on?!) and the furnace turned on. It had been about 22 hours without power.

I don’t think we’ve ever been without power for that long…and we lived through 25 years of Michigan winters and a few hurricane systems in North Carolina. I don’t want to do it again.