6:22 AM: The Sun wasn't up, but the snow was coming down.
The storm started overnight. Expectations varied wildly as they often do.
It was a rapid shift in temperatures. The week before hadn't felt like winter at all! I didn't have a screenshot for Sunday's weather, but it was positively Spring on Saturday!
The storm wasn't even on my radar as anything other than rain until Sunday night.
It was a good thing the hand-off for Shane was on Sunday! We would've been snowed out.
We rushed out to do some early morning horse chores before things came down too heavily. Carrie decided to leave all the horses stalled. It'd keep them out of the elements at the cost of requiring us to clean out all their stalls later.
The snow came down hard and it kept coming.
It was wet, heavy, and clung to everything. I started to wonder aloud if there'd be school on Tuesday before 9 AM.
And a little after 9 AM the power clicked off. We weren't worried, because we have a backup generator. Carrie and Shane curled up on the couch to start Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (He protested he didn't want to watch it until he was sucked in and then didn't want to stop!).
It was a shock to find we didn't have any gas for said generator. I'd used some to fill up the gator the other week and hadn't realized it was the last. Ideally, we would have checked the cans before the storm.
I found myself clearing off the truck.
Carrie found herself driving off in said truck.
Nana asked why I wasn't the one to go and the answer is fairly straightforward: The truck was our best vehicle for the weather and Carrie hates to let anyone else drive it but her! Also, with Carrie's anxiety sometimes the best thing for her is to do something. If I'd driven off, she'd have stayed at home fretting and snapping at Shane whenever he bounced and bounded across the room hollering about the snow she was worried about!
The trip took hours. The road to the closet gas station in town was blocked by a disabled vehicle and Carrie didn't want to wait. She went up 20 and hit a road block.
Carrie said it was the worst she'd ever driven in. She stopped counting fallen trees at 75 and she'd barely gone north.
She took a photo of this "good" stretch of road. It was the straightaway before Green Mountain Store where she could drive over fallen limbs instead of zig-zagging around them at 15 mph.
Carrie said that it felt like an old-time community whenever she saw another car (that wasn't disabled and abandoned). People would pull up to each other, roll down their windows and trade information about the roads they'd seen.
Carrie was eventually forced to turn around home and the road into Scottsville had been cleared. She was able to fill up our three tanks (15 gallons) and came home hours after she initially left.
There was another gas station to our West we considering going to, but it would have been a failure. Facebook posts told us it was out of power and live power lines and trees blocked the road.
The generator was a pill to start. There was some old gas in it, it was cold, and the electric starter didn't work. It took many false starts before it decided to kick over.
We needed the generator to start the well for horse chores. We can't refill water or soak food without water pressure.
The lots were nasty. It's going to be an awful clean-up at some point.
The horses let us know what they thought of it, too.
Which wasn't all bad. Several of them went for an immediate roll in the snow!
I didn't catch the ladies playing, but I captured some video of Ernie frolicking about!
The boys lot seemed to be in the most disrepair. It was drier under Eowyn and Abbi's lean-to. It's going to be a muddy mess as everything thaws.
Shane was desperate to go outside all morning, but we wouldn't let him until we had a way to guarantee some heat to come back into. Now that we had gas, we kicked a ball off the back porch and let the boys run loose!
For the first time, Shane could outrun Loki.
Poor Loki whined at one point as Shane pulled away from him! The snow was too deep!
Shane stopped to gather up snow to throw at Loki and Lokes noticed I was trying to film him hopping about.
Have you ever seen an artic snow pouncing into the snow? Loki had to hop and bound instead of run!
Shane spent most of his time covering the dog in snow while I moved to shovel a path to the barn. The boy came over to me and at his request I uncovered a path and covered Shane!
I think it gave him flashbacks to the beach (with much colder 'sand!').
Shane threw many snowballs at Loki and I while I worked.
Even the horses knew that was a bad idea: I was holding a snow shovel! Snow shovels are the ultimate weapon in snowballs fights.
Shane wanted a turn with the shovel himself, but he can't catapult snow the way I do.
He shoveled a few scoops to help me out and then ran off.
I had cleared the ground, but Shane and Loki recovered some of it for me.
Snow is fun when you're dressed right. You can roll around in it and it's like you're armored.
It makes for some great pictures, too!
Shane stayed out after Loki and I went in. I want to take Shane to ski or snowboard at some point. There was no snow to speak of before now, but maybe one of these weekends we'll make the drive.
Shane came in coated from head to toe. We'd lost some heat, so we made him bundle up in socks, two shirts, and a coat.
There was no word on when we'd get power back. Our plan was to run the generator for an hour or two to charge phones, power our electric fireplace, and prepare food. Then we'd rest the generator for a few hours before turning it on again.
The barn lights weren't on a circuit powered by the generator, so we did horse chores by flashlight. We used hot water for the pony water troughs to help them resist freezing too soon.
It was predicted to drop to 14° F overnight, so everyone got the best blankets available.
Lilly ended up with two! We'd found out this morning that the waterproofing on Eowyn's blanket had failed, but thankfully Carrie had a spare.
With the house getting cold, we set up a communal bedroom for warmth in the living room. It was the first time we've pulled out the couch bed. We turned off the generator and piled in together at 9 PM.
Shane was excited. He was all about sleeping as a group! He was a little toot though when we all crawled in. He kept bouncing around and trying to hog covers to burrito himself up. I pulled out my phone to read and the boy who sleeps with his lights on said he needed it absolutely dark to sleep.
Too bad for him. I kept reading and he eventually fell asleep wiggling against my back! Carrie fell asleep somewhere in there, too. I put my book down and was the last one to turn in. The day would've been more fun without the power going out, but we're blessed to have the resources we do. We'll get through this and it'll be a good story in the meantime!
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