January 22- Our Snow Adventure

So we moved to a little town in Cali at the base of the mountain just a little ways tucked inside on your way to Big Bear. It is not known for getting a heavy load of snow each year. I'm not sure to be honest what there annual average is but I know it is a lot less than we received this year judging by what my neighbors have told me. One neighbor who grew up here and is quite a bit older than us told us it's the worst snow storm up here in the past 20 years. Lucky us! Thursday night it started snowing. Friday Steve had to call in to work because he couldn't get the car out of the drive way, we were snowed in until late Friday and could only get out after a local up here with his own tractor plowed the feet of snow off the roads, oh and did I mention that our electricity went out until Wednesday/Thursday when Edison finally got it restored. Lots of poles were down on the highway up to our house and a line on our street was also down right in front of our neighbors house. You don't realize how much you depend on electricity until you don't have it for a few hours (or days, depending on how buff you are or if you have a generator). We would come up with solutions for a problem dealing with our electricity only to figure out half way through our explanition to the other that we would have to have guess what? Electricity. Our phone line went out on Saturday. Well Friday we escaped as soon as we could to go get supplies. We made a fun night of it although it was a long night. S'mores, camping in the living room, flash lights, candles, popcorn and sleeping bags were all part of the big adventure. Saturday night we stayed at my parents who live in normal society about 10 minutes down the hill. I wanted electricity to be able to get ready for church on Sunday. When we came back on Sunday to our place and the kids were all so cold they were all pretty much crying we decided my parent's place was a way better option than trying to brave the storm with these three little ones. Oh ya and when we came back on Sunday our pipe from underground that attaches to the house had frozen since we didn't leave any running water. Thankfully our neighbor filled us in on where it might be frozen and we were able to take care of it right away before we burst our pipes. Thanks neighbor and Thanks Mom and Dad for saving our hineys and our sanity.

This is our picnic table after Thursday night and Friday morning had its way with it.

This is our road after it had been plowed. You can see a very thick layer of ice.

This is one of our cars Friday morning. By the weekends end we could see even less of it

This is an old oak tree in our front yard Saturday night. It just looked amazing. I LOVE how the snow is sticking to the sides of it.

This is a bad picture of it but right off of our road is the main street where you drive under these two trees that seem to meet in the middle. They looked so beautiful that night. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of it.

See I told you we have a baby named Emmitt. He seems to always be sleeping lately when we take pictures or too young to be doing what his brother and sister are. (New Goal : More pics of Emmitt who brings me so many smiles.)

Believe it or not the s'mores did not get all over our house or our kiddo's.

Unfortunately one too many made it into my mouth.

The only light in these pictures is coming from the flash and the flashlights the kids are carrying around. It was about 9:30 on Friday night. It was hard to take pictures because you couldn't see what you were shooting until it was taken.

Steve was such a trooper for letting me have my way and stay in a freezing cold house with no electricity.

This experience was hopefully once in a life time and was quite the initiation in to living up here. It took poor southern cali a few days to figure out this mess. At the bottom of the highway they had a CHP officer keeping everyone but the residents of the mountain out due to the condition of the roads being so icy even after they were "cleared". We did however have a great time spending time with just our little ones in this unique situation with no modern distractions.