Storm Pictures

This is one of the large branches that fell in the front yard early in the storm, another fell the next day...right by the kids!

We got ice first, then snow!

This branch went down on our power lines and into the neighbors yard. We'll see when it melts if it got their pool cover. We did not want to get very close to the pool because it was hard to see where the edge ended and pool cover began!

This is one of the evergreen shrubs near the front door. The ice was SO thick!

Deep Freeze in the Ozarks

What a week we have had! The kids were out of school the whole week and today is the first day we have felt safe in driving. Snow is one thing, but ice is a different situation. We lost some big limbs off of our large trees and one fell within a few inches of our back door. Another fell near Justin while he was heating water on the camp stove in the back yard. Another fell while Jeff was in the front yard. We decided to stay completely away from trees from then on. There was a full inch or more of ice on everything. When the sun came out and shone through the ice on everything the world glistenend beautifully. The sad part is that so many of our beautiful trees are just destroyed. It will be a long time before things fill out and look normal again. Anyone in the tree trimming business will do very well! Today as the temperature rose, the ice began to fall. The ground is just covered with chunks of ice and it fell all day long - chunks about the size of hotdogs lie beneath the trees in heaps. It sounded like we had squirrels running all over the roof dropping nuts and scurring about as the ice would fall and slide off of the roof. It was quite a ruckus!We were without power for a couple of days, but had our generator, fuel, food, water and lots of blankets to keep warm. The second day we figured out how to hook the generator up to the furnace - SWEET! We survived better than most. Many of our neighbors had to move to hotels to survive. We have enjoyed the opportunity to serve many neighbors, church members and strangers remove trees from their driveways, roadways and roofs. It will take months to clean it all up - it just means we will have LOTS of opportunities to serve!

Upstairs Camping Trip

 

Justin and Bryce were supposed to go on a winter campout that was going to be held in a cave near our home. Barry was just getting over a bad cold and Justin had missed school due to sickness. It just was not going to happen, but not to be left out, they went camping anyway! They just did it upstairs! Jeffrey made his place in the sofa, Barry "under the stars" and Bryce in his tent. They all had their own lights to enjoy some bedtime reading, Barry's was the funniest. His baseball cap has 2 lights built into the visor! They had a blast!