Saved by a wood stove, hot water, and a little dog

For those of you who don't know and are wondering if I dropped off the face of the earth this week - we were hammered with a terrible ice storm starting Monday afternoon! The power went off Tuesday around 3 PM, came back on briefly Wed. then was off until Thursday afternoon. We were also without water for awhile on Tuesday because the same tree that fell and took out the power also broke the school's water main. So needless to say - we've been trying to keep warm in very cold temperatures as well as find food to eat. It looks like a war zone around here - branches down everywhere. The ice was a solid carpet over everything which made walking and driving a little tricky. We were VERY thankful for hot showers and our wood stove - it came in handy! The temperature never dropped below 50 in the house (it was in the teens outside I think) and we got it as high as 62 in the house burning it all day.

The academy was also without power except for 2 generators - we were glad Ryan was NOT a boy's dean this week! We have been amazed at the staff's hard work to make sure the kids were fed and taken care of through all of this.


The icicles on the bird feeder lengthened as the days went by


All of the power lines were covered with ice - and this was only on the 1st day - it got much thicker than this.

Ryan went out to move his truck for fear branches would fall on it (and they would have) but he found that he couldn't see out. When he rolled down his window he had to punch the sheet of ice out too - you can see its remnants still in place.

Our decimated tree in the backyard - this picture doesn't do it justice but there are at least 4-5 major branches that broke off this tree. Imagine this and worse to every tree in the whole area. We heard snapping branches about every 5 minutes during the worst part of the storm.

Our birdhouse was the "watering hole" - we went through over 5 lbs of birdseed in 2 days.

The ice became deadly as it started to fall off the trees. Ryan wore his NY Giants hardhat when we went outside - I was not so lucky and I think a few of the pieces gave me a headache when they bounced off my noggin.


We made burgers, hot chocolate, warmed baked beans, and roasted hotdogs using this stove. We were so thankful for it!

Just to show you how powerful this stove is when heated up: I moved this candle away from the stove thinking this might happen but apparently I didn't move it far enough!

And I'll save the little dog part for the next post!