Snowpocalypse!!!

We have lived in the Seattle area long enough now to know that since snow doesn't happen often, especially big snow storms, the locals like to give them names, like hurricanes. So this last storm was affectionately named Snowpocalypse.

The first couple of days of snow were fun. The kids had a great time playing and making snowmen.

(Yes, I realize those are pink gloves. Dylan, I'm sorry! I should really go buy you a more boyish pair.)

Lindsey's creation

Brandon's creation. Notice his baseball cap.

This is how we fit a swing into the side yard by the play set for the time being....

Then the next day we got 5-6 inches, which is pretty significant for Seattle. I did lots of shoveling and we did some sledding down our driveway!

  

But then we got freezing rain on top of all that snow the next day. And everything was covered in ice.

Ice is very heavy and we had trees falling and limbs crashing down left and right. We saw the light from several transformers exploding throughout the day. Our power was out when we woke up that morning. When I stepped outside, you could just hear the cracking of the ice and the breaking of tree limbs every few seconds.

Our neighbor's garbage can

The grass out back

Our neighbor's car

And our steep driveway became quite treacherous.

Justin still had to work, and his laptop was running out of battery. So we tried to go to our friends the Dolan's house just down the hill. We ran into a fallen tree and had to go back up and around as we tried to get to their house a different way.

We finally made it to their house, but not after we had to dodge several heavy trees or fallen limbs. We enjoyed a warm lunch and electricity at their house, but then their power was knocked out as well. After the babies woke up from their naps, we decided to try to get back up the hill to our house. We ran into a couple of trees that had fallen over but were resting on the power lines. Here is Justin trying to break off limbs or try to decide if we could get through.

We finally made it up the hill thanks to Justin's snow driving skills. When we got to our house, we hurried to try to get things in order, find all of the flashlights in the house, get organized, get bedding and build a lean-to by the gas fireplace to try to trap some heat. We knew our house was going to get cold that night, and it got dark just after 4:30 that afternoon.

Here is a picture of a tree precariously leaning over our house. With all of the heavy ice, we were very nervous that it would fall on us or that we would get a branch through one of our windows.

Trees very heavy with ice

Here is a blurry picture of our kitchen lit up with as many candles as I could find. We smelled like Bath and Body Works, with at least different scents burning!

We went over to the Bjorn's house up on the hill since they still had electricity and to get something warm for dinner. It was so nice to have light again and get all of our electronics charged up. After a fun night with them, we headed back to our dark house to spend the night. The kids were excited but also nervous about sleeping downstairs by themselves, so we camped down there with them. And no, our rug is not very comfortable when you have to sleep on it! The next morning I got some pictures of Justin's fabulous fort! (The sheet on the side came un-taped during the night.

It was amazingly warm under here. Once you got out, the house was really chilly!

After we ate some oatmeal for breakfast that our neighbors with a gas burning stove were nice enough to let us use, we decided to go to yet another friend's house to spend some time, since Justin still had to work and we needed some electricity. A few more pictures from our drive to their house....

We ended up at the Millerberg's house, with the Bulter family who also lost power. The guys all work at Amazon, so they worked away on their laptops in the office while the moms and kids cooked and played all day. We now call this the Amazon South Campus.

Getting ready to do some relay races

We put the kids to bed that night and stayed up playing games with the adults. It was a fun way to spend our power outage!

The next day we woke up and went home to a house with power restored. We are very thankful for the hard working crews that got us back online. There were over 300,000 people in the Seattle area that went without power, and some in our ward went for 6 days before their power was restored. So we are very fortunate. We did get some large limbs in our back yard from that leaning tree, but they didn't break any windows.

What a week! It sure makes us more thankful for the roof over our head, and the warmth and electricity we usually enjoy!