Winter Extreme 2012

We had a great little snow day last Sunday, which would have been plenty enough snow for me for the year.  Much to my chagrin just around the corner was Winter Extreme 2010...  Sunday's snow lingered through Tuesday with light snow dustings here and there.  And the extreme started Wednesday -- it snowed at least 8 inches!!  Of course when it snows that much around here everything gets shut down and people hibernate until it warms up.  And that's exactly what we did.  According to the weather forecast, it was supposed to warm up and rain.  The snow was supposed to be mostly melted by Thursday afternoon.

Instead we woke up Thursday morning to a major power outage throughout most of Western Washington and raining ice pellets.  The three or so inches of ice on top of the eight inches of snow made the neighborhood roads quite treacherous.  Plus, trees galore had fallen all over.  Just down our street a tree completely took down the power lines (hence the outage).

So, what do you do in a house with no heat, no lights, no entertainment....and an active toddler?  Go absolutely crazy.  We tried our best to keep Austin busy, but that's a struggle even on a normal day.

He played with cornstarch and water.

And popcorn kernels.

He explored with his own lantern.

And relaxed in the heat of the fire.

He took two showers (no pictures) so long that he used up all the hot water.  But mostly we just willed the time to pass and the power to return.  That night we layered up to endure sleeping in a freezing house.

Friday morning we woke up with out power still.  We had to get out of the house.  We had completely run out of options to keep any of us busy.  Plus, we were freezing.  With chains we managed to get to the mall.  We spent a long time just walked around and letting Austin play at the play place.

I couldn't face sleeping another night in a freezing house, so we had a sleepover with my grandparents (who had their power back).  Luckily, our power came on that night anyway and we were able to come home to a warm house today.

Throughout the day I kept thinking how miserable our situation was.  And, yes, it was.  I never want to be cooped up without power -- with busybody Austin -- again.  In fact, I'm planning on moving to a warm weather climate before next winter just to prevent such a situation.  I couldn't imagine how the pioneers managed.  But then I remembered how Laura in  Little House on the Prairie played with a blown up pig bladder as a ball.  At least it didn't come to that....