Texas Snow-pocalypse

We went to bed on Valentine's night expecting to wake up to some white stuff, and we did! The kids didn't believe it - snow in Houston! It's extremely rare! Obviously, this doesn't hold a candle to our Idaho snows of yore, but it was exciting to break out the ol' snow gear (most of which we had outgrown - O handed his down to H, and had to wear some of mine that were too small for me). And we assumed that our power would come back on at some point during the day, having cut off suddenly at 5:30am that morning. Little did we know...

There were so many things to check out in the snow. It was pretty cold, well below freezing, so we were almost the only ones checking out the morning snow in the neighborhood.

Happy President's Day!

Our neighbor kids were out, trying out some cardboard on their driveway. Owen showed them how it was done, although this is NOT how we sledded in Idaho.

We spent most of the day back inside trying to warm up without heat or power. Thankfully, we have a gas stove, so we could reheat some soup for lunch and make some hot cocoa the old-fashioned way. The kids went back out in the afternoon when the neighbor was assembling a fort with some snow chunks from someone's driveway.

It was a little bizarre to see our tropical plants covered in snow and icicles. Time will tell if they'll make a comeback or if they are goners. Add landscaping to the house list...

The only thing that looked at home in the snow were the plethora of holly bushes in the front beds. These things are hearty through summer heat and winter freezes; I wish I liked them more, because I guess I'm stuck with them!

The power blissfully came back on in the late afternoon, so I made another hot soup for dinner, while we had light, thinking it might be part of the rolling blackouts. Shortly after dinner (2.5 hours later), it cut back off, so we gathered flashlights and went to bed pretty early with hopes that it would come back on soon, since it was going to be 10 degrees that night! We were also advised by our neighbors to cut our house water, since they'd had a pipe burst in their ceiling, so we did. But there was still no power the next morning, and our house water valve had frozen shut, so we were now without water and power with teen temperatures outside. The cat was constantly in search of human warmth in the 48* interior of our house.

We played family games, we read, and the kids and I went for a walk when the sun came out. It was still chilly, but direct sunlight had started some things melting a little, and it felt good to get out of the house for a bit. We did not get power back at all that day, though we were able to get some water back to the house by late afternoon. 

By the following day, staring down our third frigid day with no power, we decided to venture across town to Uncky Dan's house, where they never lost power. It was a slow drive on surface roads, since highways were closed, and we were low on gas, but hardly any gas stations were open (no power), and those that were had lines of cars out on the street waiting for gas. Sure enough, 20 minutes after we got there, a neighbor let us know our power had returned! Then another neighbor informed us that we probably had a leak somewhere because our water meter was spinning pretty fast, so they had to cut our water off again. The visit was cut short, and we eventually made it back home to heat, light, spoiled food, and a leak somewhere in the sprinkler system. It could have been so much worse! Our poor neighbors all over town had busted interior pipes, had to remove drywall, fix pool piping, boil water, buy an expensive generator to warm their FFA show chickens, etc. Somehow, our neighborhood escaped the boil water notice.

Thankfully, we had thawed and somewhat returned to some normalcy by the end of the week, despite school being cancelled. It was nice to have a birthday to celebrate and an excuse to make H's delicious chocolate cake again! This was definitely a lesson in gratitude!