I just knew I shouldn't have talked about our lack of snow a couple weeks ago.  Yesterday we really had a storm.  I think we must have received about 12-18" of fresh snow.  The storm seemed to be over a fairly small area as friends just south of us didn't receive more than an inch or so.

My sister in Washington was so surprised we got that much, she said they got rain.  You just never know up here.  We are only northeast of her a little bit.

The picture on the right is our front yard swing.  Check out some of the summer pictures on the blog for a comparison.  The left picture on on the bottom is of our driveway with the chicken coop on the other side.

Not only all the snow but we lost power around 1pm yesterday.  That happens frequently around here.  But it usually comes back on in a couple hours.  Yesterday it was nearly 7:30pm before we got it back on.  Because it gets dark so early these days (3:45pm)  we decided to eat early while there was still daylight, so we had salad, crackers and cheese and of course some spice cake and lemon bars from our Bible study the other night.  Not bad.

We just had a feeling things were going to be a little rough so we'd laid a fire ready to be lit as needed.  After our heater and lights went off that was the first thing I did, light the fire.  So glad we have our little wood stove.  It has saved our lives, or our comfort levels, so many times over the years.  We have cooked on it, dried our boots and coats near it, and heated our whole house with it.  So tiny.  And they don't even sell these any more.  What a shame.  Its perfect. 

We've also stored water for times like this.  We have our own well.  That has to have electricity in order to operate the pump.  Lots of water to drink but we don't 'buy' water to flush with.  Summer, we can dip water out of our pool, winter ... well, let's say the ice skating is great.

I was in the middle of baking a pecan pie when the power went out.  Fortunately the only thing I hadn't done was put it in the oven to cook.  So today, that will be my duty to get it done.

If it hadn't been so dark outside with the snow I might have gotten my new book read, my new scarf knit or so many other things I ended up not doing.  Oh well, there's still lots of time.

One last thing I wanted to share with you all.  If you don't watch The Voice on TV you probably haven't seen this yet.  The show wanted to do a tribute to Sandy Hook so decided to do it at the beginning of the show.  It had nothing to do with the show itself, just their way of remembering the victims.      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO64urOFNaY    Please watch this.