There are a lot of hilly roads here so when the snow comes, it's not just a snow day for the kids, but also for a lot of businesses, mine included. So we decided to take advantage of the day off and we made a sledding hill from the front door, down the pathway of the front yard and out to the road. We had a great time ...play in the snow, come in and get warm, drink hot chocolate, then go back out and play in the snow. We had some friends, come over to do some "night sledding" since the pathway in the front yard, has light posts all the way down...
Then the freezing rain came and the sledding trail, soon became a luge track... good times! We could start to see the ice forming on the branches of the trees and we could see some of the trees start leaning and as the tree leaned, you could hear the cracking of the ice on the branches.... kind of a cool experience... I had NO idea what other kinds of "coolness" we were in store for. During the night, on Wednesday the power went out.... and we woke up to everything frozen in time covered in ice!
It's hard to capture the awesomeness of it all in just a few pictures. It is truly something you have to experience for yourself!
This was the road leading into our subdivision. The trees were so heavy with ice that they were bent over and blocking the road so one couldn't drive down the road without having the frozen branches "tinkle" as the car passed under them. The best way to describe is was to imagine walking through a doorway with strings of beads hanging in it. The tinkling sound the beads make as you walk through is much like what it was like to drive down this road.
Many of the branches were bent over so far that the top of the tree was actually frozen to the ground! Over the next couple of days, many of the branches snapped from the weight of the ice and snow.
We lost several branches and trees at our house... so sad because we had AWESOME landscaping at our house.
It was kind of eerie to stand outside and hear the trees groan then crack, then hear the whoosh of snow and ice and branches falling. We were entertained for hours in our cold dark house just watching the branches in our yard fall. They continued to fall all day Thursday and Thursday night. Laying in bed listening to the evergreen branches crack and then slide down the side of the house was like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard. As I laid there listening, I was peaceful knowing... it's not my house.... HA!.. one of the benefits of being a renter! Thankfully, on Thursday, Emma's future in-laws took pity on us and invited us over to their home out in Enumclaw (they have a generator to run pretty much the whole house) to sit by their warm cozy fire, eat yummy homemade chicken noodle soup (did I mention it was warm) and hang with them for a while.
When we got home, the power was still out, so we decided to fire up the generator.... couldn't find a gas can that wasn't full of ice, since the lids got knocked off and the rain filled them up... then the generator somehow had ice in the engine and was frozen... Note to self: From now on, keep the gas in the garage and fire up the generator in September to make sure it works!
Friday morning, still no power and most of Bonney Lake is still black as well. One gas station in town had a generator so it could pump gas, so we got a 1 gallon can... pathetic, I know, and went and got a gallon of gas while Wayne put a propane heater next to the generator to thaw the engine. We got it running...hurrah! Nana had an ortho appointment that had already been rescheduled twice so we decided to venture down to Sumner which is only a few miles down the hill... It took us almost 45 minutes to get there because of all the traffic trying to get out of town... Note to self: In case of emergency evacuation, take the back roads! When we got home, still no power, so we got the baseball bats and started beating the ice off trees.
It was very therapeutic to swing the bat as hard as you can over and over at the trees to try to free them from their frozen prison. It was amazing to see the branches spring to life as the burden of the ice was lifted. They seemed so happy ... almost like they were being reborn. I imagine maybe that is what our soul feels like when we repent of sin and that burden is then lifted and we can spring back up and stand tall instead of being weighed down with guilt to the point we actually snap!
Wayne also discovered on Friday that our gas water heater has a battery back up so we may not have lights, but we have all the hot water we need to take a long. candle lit bubble bath... nothing like a bubble bath and clean shaven legs to make a girl feel better about the power being out!
Saturday morning... still no power... UGGGHHHHHHH!!!!! We spent the day with the chainsaw clearing the debris that was dangling from the trees (with the help of a couple of friends that were actually young enough to climb the tree with the chainsaw) and checking on friends to see if they needed any help. It was awesome to me to see the network of people from church that was going around checking on each other and just being of service wherever they could. Not only was the power out, but most land lines were not working and the cell towers had spotty at best coverage. We could send out a text from Nana's phone, if she was sitting in one special spot on her bed... that was it!
Saturday evening the power came back on.... YAY for the workers at PSE who worked round the clock in some harsh and dangerous conditions to restore everything we have come to depend on... at least those things that require power, like the computer, the cell phones, the satellite and facebook!
Looking back, it was a great experience to go through to see how prepared we are both physically and emotionally for an emergency situation... Note to self: Having banana bread in the freezer was a good thing to have on hand... it helped with the emotional stress of the situation!
It was a great time to spend together as a family and with friends playing games, working in the yard cleaning up the damage, and going out together to serve others. Pretty sure I would have gotten all that in the first day or two, but I am grateful for the whole experience!
