And now, for the weather........

Dear Family and Friends,

As I promised, I am trying to bring everyone up to date on the last month or so, since I was so awful about writing.

December was a very difficult month for those of us in New England. In the early morning hours of Friday the 12th, much of the Northeast was treated to nearly an inch of freezing rain. While most of the time, when we get ice storms, it's only about a quarter of an inch or so that covers the trees. As we came to find out, trees cannot take the pressure of anything over about 1/2 inch of ice. That night was spooky.

My condo complex is really in the woods. That night all you could hear were trees cracking and falling to the ground. We lost power at about 1:30 AM Friday morning. I was very fortunate to get my power back on Sunday afternoon - that's right, it took 3 days to get it back. My sister, who lives a mere 5 miles from me, was without power for a week. They got power back late Thursday the 18th. She and her kids stayed with me while my brother in law tried to keep the house warm with a fire place to keep the water pipes from freezing.

Although it was difficult not having the conveniences of electricity, it was amazing how creative people got in coming up with ways to cook a meal. Those with gas stoves did OK, or if you had a gas grill with a full tank, but others - like me- only had an electric grill. Not much luck when you have no power! I got some chafing dishes and sterno and was able to boil veggies and chicken for dinner one night.

The area was devastated with so many trees and power lines down. They had power crews in from all over the East coast as well as Ohio and Kentucky to help us get back power. A month later, you still see huge trees in yards. This is primarily because we no sooner finished with the clean up from the ice when we were socked with a big snow storm. We got about a foot of snow at my house. This was the first real white Christmas we have had in decades!

Here are some pictures from the storms for you to see...

The tree in the picture on the left missed this house by only about 3-4 feet. The picture on the right shows power lines just dangling....

My back yard with a foot of new snow.....

Well, that's it for the weather.....of course we have had yet another storm last weekend and it looks like a dusting or more for tonight..... OK - I've had enough snow to last me the rest of the winter!

Sigh.

Blessings,

Chinamom and Sophie