WARNING! LOTS OF PHOTOS...do you want to continue?The picture above is my outside mini fridge! I have ice and snow around the milk jug and other things in the basket.
Short story - our generator wouldn't start. That's another story, not going to tell it here.
We DID have running water, hot water and heat from our blessed natural gas fireplace... see a few photos down with Kirsten.
Taken from our backyard of a neighbor's tree. It did end of breaking off the lower branches over our other neighbor's fence, fence was okay.
Our bird bath.
Rain gutters full of snow topped with frozen ice from freezing rain.
Frozen ice on roof vents.
That nice cozy fireplace and Kirsten enjoying it!
Street lamp with icicles.
Our little trees along the street side of our house. The one is really bent low. it didn't break! You couldn't break the ice off as it was 1/2 an inch thick and would not come off!
The same bent tree the day before but not as bent.
Nice 1/2 inch ice coated branches with little glass balls the the tips off the branches.
You can see the buds frozen in the ice!
Icicles from my car.
My car, frozen in one inch ice on top and 1/2 an inch on sides!
Frozen hoses!
Our pretty gate and fence.
Let the thaw begin! The sun tried to come out!This is 1-1/2 days after the ice storm!
Things are looking better! The same tree in the back ground was bent over with ice the day before, see above photos.
My mini fridge thawed out. Temps finally got out of 30 degrees to 38 degrees!
My car looks much better!
You can see my little animals now!
The street is almost bare from all the snow and ice.
That beautiful plum tree springing up a little but still broken, sniff, sob.
Things are looking better! The same tree in the back ground was bent over with ice the day before, see above photos.
My mini fridge thawed out. Temps finally got out of 30 degrees to 38 degrees!
My car looks much better!
You can see my little animals now!
The street is almost bare from all the snow and ice.
That beautiful plum tree springing up a little but still broken, sniff, sob.It was an adventure! We were blessed with water and the fireplace! We used candles. I should have taken pictures of our warm candlelight by night. :o) I didn't miss TV one bit! We listed to the radio and Neil's ham radio for updates. I read 'Matched' and 'Crossed' by Ally Condie the 2-1/2 days without power. Fantastic read! Can't wait for book #3 coming out the end of the year!
I forgot to mention that areas south of Seattle were without power. There were over 280,000 PSE (Puget Sound Energy) 'customers' without power which was just over 1 million people. There were also many businesses without power.
We did have our nephew Jason McClelland (bless his heart, thank you!) come over this afternoon and he wired in our power panel for our generator to plug in and then we just run the generator and flip a switch! Unfortunately Neil left the gas in the generator since last winter and it gummed up the carburetor and it needs to be fixed, but oh, well! That will be taken care of next week! :o)
Our power came on tonight at 6pm. We were only without power 2-1/2 days. When we lived in Covington (1/2 an hour from where we now live) we went without for 5 days and it was not uncommon 3 to 4 days at a time.
All in all it was not a bad experience! :o)
Bless the wonderful people who worked (and are still are working to restore power to others) so hard to restore power. There were so many downed trees and power lines. Where we live the lines are under ground.
This is just after the ice thawed. It bounced back a little bit.
I added this picture since the original post. Today (January 26, 2012) my neighbor trimmed the plum tree. I went over and talked to him and he is hoping it will not go into shock and that it will bounce back. We are both hopeful! :o)
Grandpa with his girls!
