So much snow!!

Well Peter and I have been wishing like 8 year old children for a blizzard. Seriously. We must've been stuck in the little kid mentality. Being homeowners makes us look at snow in a whole new light.

The forecast showed the potential for lots of snow. We were hoping they were right. Well, they were! It started coming down on Friday when I was at lunch with the girls from work. By the time Peter picked me up on Friday, there were a few inches on the ground. The roads were very messy so we headed straight home. We made dinner and were watching movies and hanging out and the power kept flickering on and off. Around midnight the power went out for good. We decided to head to bed and hope that it would come back on during the night. No such luck. We woke up freezing in the middle of the night. I grabbed an extra blanket and threw it on the bed. When we woke up again in the morning, we were even more cold! We keep our house cold to begin with (63 degrees at night) so by the time 8 hours had passed, it had dropped to 52 degrees!

We were kind of bummed that the power hadn't come back on because that meant no heat, no stove/oven using since we have electric, and the possibility of freezing pipes. We decided to head outside for a bit and at least start to shovel out a bit.

Here I am bundling up!

What we saw when we went outside was truly a winter wonderland.

This is from our bedroom window. Our car is buried under there somewhere.

Another view from our bedroom window.

Everywhere we looked there was just so. much. SNOW.

Our street was very quiet. No one was up yet and since the plow hadn't hit our street yet, no one could drive on our block.

Here you can see how much snow piled up on our a/c unit. Also, that poor tree doesn't look like it's going to make it.

The snow was up to my knees!

We have a bird bath in our back yard that we usually measure snow by. You can't even see it here! That's what 20+ inches will do!

There was just snow everywhere! This is our grill area. Look at how the pine tree is drooping from the weight of the snow. Some of the branches from this tree were touching the ground. They are usually 8 feet above it!

Our chimney that you can barely see.

More drooping branches. We were worried that some of the bigger trees in our yard might topple over!

We came inside a little bit later to see if the power had been restored. Still no luck. Peter ate some cereal while I caught up on some sleep. We had to keep adding blankets to the bed because it was just so cold! We went outside mid-afternoon to continue digging out. The sun had come out and so had many of our neighbors. Everyone was chattering about the shock of how much snow we got and what to do. Many neighbors had fireplaces or gas stoves and were keeping warm. (We were a bit jealous!) We did have one neighbor who set out on foot with his wife to a close-by street that had been plowed to get picked up to go to his sister's place to wait out the power outage.

Here we are in the backyard. We figured we should take a picture since it was a memorable occasion.

Here's a little tunnel from us walking through from the front of the house to the back.

The sun was so bright as it reflected off of the snow!

After over 2 hours of digging at the car alone, this is the progress we made. A bit disheartening haha.

The sun melted some of the snow in the trees and on the porch roof. At one point we heard this loud noise that turned out to be all of the snow from the porch roof falling onto the ground. In the process, this poor shrub was crushed!

Here you can see all of the snow had fallen from the porch roof.

Here's one of the big pines in our yard so heavy laden with snow.

Beautiful dogwood branches covered in snow with the blue sky in the background.

Our street still had not been plowed. You can see some adventurous folks with 4 wheel drive had passed through though.

The other side of the street:

We decided that since our power had not come back on by 3 PM, we would need to make some sort of plan. We couldn't stay at our house with the constant dropping temperature and no one to stay warm. We checked our electric company via our iPhones and the number of affected customers kept rising so there wasn't really an end in sight to know when our power would be restored. We had great friends offer to let us come to their place. We decided to pack an overnight back just in case and headed out to dig out the car the rest of the way. As we were putting our boots back on, the power came back on! But then it went off. We had hope because at least that meant they were working on it! We decided to head out and dig out the car more and wait to see if the power stayed on. About 30 minutes later we checked and still had power! We were so excited! We called our friends to let them know we wouldn't need to make the mile trek through the snow.

Here's the car after a total 3 hours of focused efforts on digging it out! Unfortunately we didn't know until this morning that it would require an additional 1.5 hours to dig out the tire area and be able to actually get out of the driveway! We headed out a bit before church to make sure we could get out. Good thing we didn't get ready for church first!

Here's us again. Crazy and exhausted from the digging and shoveling. But happy to have power again!

We took hot showers, made a hot meal, and vegged out the rest of the day. I can certainly say that is one birthday I'll never forget!

An eventful week.

As we gathered with friends this weekend we were asked how I week has been. I like Peter's answer of "eventful" the best. What has made it so eventful? Let me catch you up...

Monday: Normal with work and then a chiropractor appointment.

Tuesday: Work and then our new Small Group (which is quickly becoming a large group :) ) study at church.

This is what it looked like Wednesday morning when we woke up. Ice was everywhere and made getting to work a bit tricky. We made it though.


I really like the way ice looks in the trees and everywhere. I just don't like how dangerous it is to travel in haha.


We had a bit of trouble getting the doors open. I took this picture from inside the car. As you can see it was covered in about an inch or so of ice.

Weds: Braved the ice for work and then came home. I wasn't feeling well in the evening and thought I was catching a stomach bug. I was getting ready to hit the sack and hope I felt better in the morning. Peter got up to get new batteries for our remote and said he heard something in the basement. When he asked me if I heard it, I said no. He went to investigate to make sure everything was ok and didn't even get the whole way down the steps before smelling gas and saying we had a gas leak. I called my mom and she said that gas companies have emergency numbers so we called them. The lady from the emergency line told us to just stay put, not turn anything on or off and someone would be there within the hour. The roads were a little tricky so it would take a lil while. We just sat on the couch waiting, but not feeling safe so we bundled up and grabbed Cadi and sat in the car until the gas guy came. He found the leak and said it was 5%, which I didn't think was bad, but apparently it's explosive level. We were just in the car to get away from the smell and didn't think blowing up was a factor! The gas guy had to turn off our gas and we called some plumbers who have 24 hr service and set up for 2 companies to come in the morning. The roads were getting really bad and we'd have to pay for the late night service, so we decided to wait until the morning. Luckily we had an electric space heater that I've had since I was young and we just bundled up for the night. I actually didn't even notice we didn't have heat because we shut the bedroom door most of the way. Until I woke up and went outside the bedroom and saw it was 48 degrees on our thermostat!

Thursday: I stayed in the warm bedroom most of the day while my awesome hubby took care of the problem. He gave me updates on what was going on and we made decisions on which plumber to use together, but other than that, I stayed in the warm bedroom and Peter was in the cold house taking care of business. We were told our hot water tank might need fixed because it was leaking, but it ended up being excessive condensation which we were very thankful for! We said we'd fix it if needed obviously, but wanted to see if it was just condensation because of being so cold. It was kind of coincidental so we were glad it wasn't broken. I was so happy to hear the furnace kick on again. We kept in touch with our bosses and ended up taking the entire day off because we thought the gas company would be back in less than an hour after we call them (because that's what they told us Weds night), but they couldn't guarantee that and could only say it'd be sometime that day. By the time the plumber and gas guy left it was after 2 PM so it was pointless to drive the hour to work to work for 2 hours and drive an hour home. We ended up being glad we took the whole day because around 4 PM we heard a hissing sound and the pilot light on the furnace went out again. The same plumbing/heating company sent a guy back out to fix it and we had heat again. Both the plumbers and the gas guy had said how lucky we were with hearing the leak and getting things taken care of so quickly. We could've died in our sleep or the house could've exploded! I thanked Peter for saving my life because he was really the one who discovered the problem, but ultimately consider us blessed to have not had a bigger issue than we did. We had heat all night and it was still on when we woke up on Friday!

This is how it looked outside on Thursday. Not a good day to not have heat!

Friday: Went to work and came home to a freezing cold house. Our pilot light on the furnace went out again! We were so tired of dealing with this issue and called the same plumbing/heating company and they sent another guy out. He replaced the thermocouple and tested it and really did what needed done. The other two times I guess they just cleaned it out and lit it. Apparently it was a really small flame and when this guy left it was a gigantic flame in two spots. So we were really happy with that and he didn't charge us anything-not even for the part! This is really a great company. The only problem was that the plumber guy who fixed the pipe wasn't experience in heating so didn't know how to fix the furnace problem with replacing the thermocouple.

Saturday: Had breakfast with Pastor Tim and then bummed around during the afternoon. In the evening we had a get together with the couples from our Small Group. It was great fun to hang out with folks outside of Tuesday night and to get to know people a little better. We even met another new couple that only started coming to Hebron 3 weeks ago. We ate tons of yummy foods, talked, played Mafia, and laughed our heads off.

Today we went to church and then ate lunch with Jerry. We also did a few errands and afterwards came home and took an afternoon nap. It was so nice to get an extra bit a sleep in! Then we went to a Soup-er-bowl party. Jerry made 3 yummy soups and we watched the Superbowl with some other friends/church folks. We left at halftime to avoid being out late and being on the road at the same time as the drunk drivers haha. We're now relaxing at home, listening to the game in the background, and vegging out before another eventful week starts. I'm really looking forward to "The Office" after the game, but might need to tape it. I don't know if I'll be able to stay up that late!

The Fun and the Not So Fun...

Well it finally happened.  Penn Hills got a decent amount of snow this past weekend and that of course meant the hubby and I bundled up for some snowy fun.  After our recent let down when Andrew was here (was supposed to snow 8 inches-actually snowed 2), we returned the sleds we had bought so sledding wasn't an option.  Snow angels and a snow ball fight were though!  

Here we are all bundled for our snowy fun.

If you look carefully, you can see our fallen fence in this picture.  We were always thinking of removing it so this pretty much seals the deal.  We'll just have to wait til everything melts to get rid of it.

We were going to build a snowman, but when Peter was attempting it, we realized the snow was too fluffy.  Oh well!

This is how much snow we had when we got home from church on Sunday.  After we came inside, it snowed a few more inches.

Here's my snow angel:

And Peter's.  He didn't really make big enough wings haha.  I think he got snow up the back of his shirt so he didn't want to move and get more snow on his skin.  I'll have to help him layer next time :P

Our little bench all covered in snow...

And our wheelbarrow full of snow:

This is what the yard looked like when we were done.  We had a great time of throwing snowballs and running around like kids.  :)

And here's us right before we came in.  A little covered with snow and laughing lots :)

And Peter got me these beautiful flowers.  Aren't they so pretty?  I love the shades of purple.  And daisies, especially gerber daisies, are my fave!

...And the not so fun...

Thursday night our hot water pipes in the kitchen froze.  We did still have hot water in the bathroom though so that was good!  We put a space heater in the garage to warm up where the pipes are and on Sunday morning when we woke up, they were unfrozen!  And no harm done to the pipes.

So we ran the dishwasher.  We have an older house and our dishwasher is portable.  So we hooked it up to the sink and when we came back later to unhook everything, our sink was centimeters from overflowing.  

Apparently our drain pipe was frozen too.  Not quite.  More like clogged.  How it got clogged when it wasn't used for 3 days is beyond me.  Maybe it had something to do with the frozen pipes.  After trying baking soda and vinegar, drain-o, a plunger, and everything else we could think of, we gave in and called a plumber.

Not gonna lie...the plumbers ripped us off.  Long story short, they charged us for 2 plumbers per hour instead of the one we were told and the second plumber didn't do anything and was on the phone with a friend the entire time.  So we paid an extra $62.50 for a total of $160.  It was worth it since other places we called said about the same amount and our sink was unclogged, but seriously.  They were shiesty.  No repeat business from us!  

Remember the near fire Peter started with burning chips?  Apparently I wanted to give him some competition.  Last night when I was making homemade applesauce, I was so excited because I love the smell that fills my kitchen when the apples are cooking.  

But then...I completely forgot about the apples cooking on the stove.  

That is until I see smoke coming from the kitchen.  Oops.  All of the water and juice cooked up so the apples were burning like crazy in the pot.  Thank goodness for T-fal!  The wooden spoon scraped the burnt apple pieces right out.  I dump them into the sink and the entire kitchen, dining room, and living room were filled with smoke.  

Again, Peter and I laughed.  But I was also ticked because I was really looking forward to eating homemade applesauce.  After opening windows, turning on the fan in the kitchen, and pouring water over the burnt apple mess to cool it off, I put the burnt mess in the trash and we called it a night.  

We stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home tonight and tons of their produce was on sale so I snatched up a bunch.  I bought apples for less than $1/pound (to make the applesauce I never got), green peppers for 68 cents each, red/orange/yellow peppers for $1 each, and other yummy cheap produce!  Looks like I'll be spending lots of time in the kitchen this weekend.  I've missed cooking and baking with the pipes being frozen and then the drain being clogged so I'll be happy to be back :)

But for now, it's time to catch some sleep!

A little update.

When the new year hit, we received emails, texts, calls, etc wishing us a "Happy and Healthy New Year."  We've got the happy part down, but are seriously struggling with being healthy.  I've been sick since Dec 28th.  That's 21 days today.  21 days.  This is nuts!  Granted, it has gotten much better, but still 3 weeks.  I haven't had a healthy day in 2009 yet haha.  For nearly two weeks I could barely speak.  It was so rough and scratchy.  I'm almost better, but still have this incessant cough/clearing of my throat that seems to not want to go away.  My energy is finally almost back to normal.  

I'm proud to say that even being very sick at one point, I didn't miss a day of work.  The weekends seemed to hit just when I felt like I needed more rest.  Sure, working meant cleaning, etc took a backseat, but sometimes that happens.  I still made dinner most nights, but my days have mostly consisted of working and resting.  

When Andrew visited, we recruited him to help take the tree outside.  I took down all of the ornaments and the boys took off the lights and took the tree out for garbage.  This was only last week.  If you were to visit, we still have all of our other Christmas decorations up.  I haven't had the energy to take them down.  Last Friday I finally got around to cleaning the whole house and that wiped me out.  With the snow that arrived this week, the Christmas decorations seemed more fitting, haha.  Since we have a 3 day weekend, I'm planning on getting them put away this weekend.  We'll see if that actually happens.  :P

It's been so cold here.  Like freezing.  Actually yesterday it was 30 degrees below freezing.  With the addition of wind chills, it felt like it was in the negative 20's.  BRR!

Cadi is probably thanking her lucky stars that she's strictly an indoor cat, haha!  She's often found sleeping on this blanket, curled up under a blanket in our bed, or hangin' out in front of the heater vent in the living room.

Here are (sadly) the only photos we have from Andrew's visit.  We had lots of fun hanging out, exploring a weird mini golf place, and the boys played video games like it was their job!

Thursday we got a few more inches of snow.  I was so excited!  I kept looking out the windows watching the big fluffy flakes fall.  It's so peaceful when no one is outside and you can just watch the snow fall and fall.  I love it!  I love the calm, quiet nights when snow is falling.  It's one of my favorite times to be outside.  Peter watched as I kept going and standing by the windows and suggested we take a little walk.  It was after 10 and we were getting read for bed, but decided to go.  So we bundled up in our boots, coats, multilayers and hats and went out.  It was bitter cold out though, so we didn't stay out long.  It was so much fun.  I'm so glad he suggested it!  

Not a fabulous picture of either of us, but a great memory that I wanted to capture!

We realized how cute our block is at night.  Most folks have lights of some sort in windows or solar lights or porch lights and it just sets such a nice little scene.  

Here's my adorable hubby enjoying the snow:

Our snow boots have finally been seeing some action!

I love this picture.  Kind of like Footprints in the Sand.

I'm so glad that we're both feeling better (yes I even got Peter sick).  And we have a nice long 3 day weekend ahead!  Peter's at a consulting job right now, but will be home shortly after lunch.  I feel bad that he has to work on a Saturday, but it's separate from his regular full-time job, so he has to work around that.  Plus he took yesterday off to rest up since he was sick and working so hard too.  So he says it's not too bad :)

And I just realized that I had started several blog posts during my low energy times and never got around to finishing them and posting them.  So I just did that too.  So you might see a few other new posts too, haha.

Baby, it's COLD outside!

The wind is currently howling like crazy outside our bedroom window.  Just the sound of it brings me chills.  When Peter and I made a quick run to the grocery store around 4:30 PM today, we both commented on how much colder it was than when we went to church at 11 AM.  Then we heard at some point on the news that it was going to get verryyyy cold tonight.  As the evening progressed, we both could feel it getting colder in our 50+ year old house so we added a blanket or sweatshirt to keep warm.  

Out of curiosity I just checked weather.com and this is what I saw.  Current temp: 5 degrees.  Factor in the windchill and it feels like negative 15!  Oh baby, it is most definitely cold outside!

Winter's Warning

Ok Mother Nature.  I heard you loud and clear.  Winter is coming.  And apparently it's going to be brutal.  Snow in October is not funny ya know.  It's not even Halloween!  I have to admit though...if you sent me a blizzard this year, I wouldn't be mad.  Or maybe we could agree on a white Christmas?