Let It Snow

The forecast was mixed for last Friday.  There were rumors of snow but hey, its Georgia, we don’t get a lot of snow.  I didn’t even rush out to buy bread and milk.  That’s how little thought I gave it. 

About once a year we get just enough snow or ice (usually ice) to sled for a few hours.  After looking outside Friday morning I didn’t think we would even have that much.  So I planned a stay-inside-and-"make"- gingerbread-houses day.  Don’t think I bake my own gingerbread and create elaborate cookie house plans…we don’t even buy the pre-made put-it-together-yourself houses.  For my kids it’s all about the candy.  We buy pre-made houses.  Brilliant product.  Or in this case pre-made and pre-broken houses.  Shoot?  I was going to have to run to the store.  And I might as well stock up on movies and hot chocolate for the inevitable house full of teenagers I’m about to get since they just announced school would get our early…

I hesitated to go out in this.  Why?  Because southerners lose their ever-loving minds once the snow starts to stick to the road.  I like to think I'm an excellent driver in snow and ice.  But one does run the risk of having some idiot plow into you if you decide to drive in the snow.

I call this photo "Panic at the Walmart"

I may or may not have stopped at McDonald's on the way home and by the time I got there the porch looked like this. Wow.  That's actual snow.  Impressive for Georgia.  

I think I'll measure it.

Wow 2.5 inches. The kids will love this.  "D" came home early and we had a great plan.

Meanwhile I ignored my kids.  Ahhhh.  Having teenagers is the best.  I did have a motherly feeling (don't worry it passed quickly) and took a photo of my child making a snowman. Southern snowmen always have mud and leaves and grass embedded in them.

Our old girl came to life in the snow.  Most days she has trouble just getting up but as soon as she set foot in the snow she began to jump and frolic.  

The snow kept falling.  It was really heavy wet snow.  Then disaster, the power went out.  No worries, I'll read for a while on my fully charged IPad.  Maybe 30 minutes later I heard a horrific sound.  A tree had fallen into the front yard.  But not OUR tree.  It was the neighbors 90 foot pine!  And of course you know what means....its time to hang out in the street with the neighbors and discuss.

All around us we heard cracking and popping as limbs and trees crashed down.  There was also an alien sounding "thwump" followed by eerie green lights in the sky as transformers blew all around us.

The snow sure was pretty though.  Before we went to bed (in our cold dark house) the snow was almost 7 inches on the back porch.  That's by far the most snow we've had in Georgia since I've lived here.

We got some rain and sleet over night and then more snow.  By morning we had more than 9 inches of accumulation.  Hey, be honest, that's a decent snowfall almost anywhere except maybe Buffalo.

It's been years since I've done this.  At least the milk won't spoil.

Since it was really cold in the house and I couldn't (without great effort and digging out old camping gear) cook,  "D" and "T" and I went in search of hot food.  The roads weren't bad but not much was open.

We just kept saying "look how pretty it is"

My trees were really weighted down.

 

Another day another snowman. Behind the boy you can barely see the top of the pine tree.  It doesn't look too bad.

Seriously I think we can just drag it across the street.

We didn't have power for over 50 hours.  We were cold and miserable and ready to kill each other before it came on LATE Sunday night.  We were literally packing for a hotel when the power returned.

After the power was restored, and the snow had melted, and the power crew had repaired the lines, we went down to check out the damage.  The neighbor's massive tree had fallen on the power lines, which created a chain reaction snapping two power poles in half and ripping the power lines out of our other neighbor's house. 

The power crew had so kindly put the cut up chunks of the tree in our yard.  Thanks guys.  This may not look bad but that trunk is easy 15 inches in diameter and extends 20 or more feet into our yard.  Georgia has this supper silly law that says if someone's tree falls in your yard...it's your problem.  Well good, I totally don't have a thing on my calendar seeing how it is December, and we have kids, and a life and all.

Maybe I'll just go hang some ornaments on it and forget about it till mid January.

Its a good thing the power was already out because these lines lay across the street for 2 and a half days.  I guess this was the situation all over town so nothing was getting fixed fast.