Blizzard 2009…Tate Won!

Our snow day turned into a snow weekend! And Tate won our prediction game with 29 inches; we topped out at around 40! Amazing!

Starting Friday evening, our “snowed in” experience became a little less fun. Around 7 PM that night, we lost electricity.

No big deal, right? We have a generator. Well, being the experienced mountain folk we are, we had about 1 gallon of gas in our canister in the garage to run the generator and snow blower. We needed to snow blow the drive way to get out to the gas station so we could keep the house warm with our pellet stove (yes, that incidentally runs on electricity!). Tyler worked on the driveway until about 9 PM that night, but when he got to the end, the road was unplowed!

Saturday morning, we had no heat, so nut bar, cheese and pudding was breakfast. Here was the scene outside:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then Tyler got back to work. He decided the gas in the MV was our best bet. One would think siphoning gas is easy. Unfortunately, the hose option did not work, so Tyler had to rig up this pump tube so we could literately SPRAY the gas from the MV into our gas jug. It takes a lot of time to siphon gas in this manner. When Tyler had enough, he would run it out to the generator to keep it running and then go snow blow for a while until more was needed. I even took a turn once the baby was down for nap.

So all Saturday was spent keeping the generator going as much as possible and keeping the driveway clear. The county never plowed our road on Saturday. Our friendly, totally prepared neighbor was out with his truck with chains on all 4 tires (he is a firefighter) and offered to go get us some gas. What a blessing! However, he was gone for ages and we had to start bundling up (the house only got down to 60 degrees, but with 3 feet of snow outside, it felt about 20 degrees colder). Everyone had on at least 2 layers (Chase had socks on under 2 long outfits). We had lots of indoor fun, Tate driving Chase around in his car, kisses, and tunnels downstairs with plastic balls.

 

Finally, around 5 PM Saturday night, the electricity came back up and we were sung as a bug in a rug. Even though the sun popped back out early Sunday morning, things were still crazy and many families still stuck in their homes, so church was canceled. Our phones and internet connection were down until about 3 PM Sunday.

As I write, the snow has dwindled to about 1 1/2 feet, the sun in Colorado is pretty strong. The boys have been out sledding, here is a fun clip Tyler caught on one of their runs.

It is times like this past weekend that I am reminded of my reliance on technology. We have a corded phone for times like these, yet, most of my numbers were in my computer or on the electricity-dependent phone! Little things like this popped up all weekend. I like technology, I totally dig the internet and use it daily, but maybe I need to do a little techno-detox or something! The best part about being without electricity is all the reading I got in over the weekend! 

Snow Ice Cream and Snow Day update

I would say, Raw Snow Ice Cream is now one of our favorite desserts! So easy and delicious!

Raw Snow Ice Cream

4 Tbsp Rapadura sugar (or other unrefined dry variety)

1/2 cup raw cream

2 egg yolks (from pastured chicks)

1 to 2 tsp vanilla

pinch sea salt

Using an electric mixer, combine all the above ingredients until the mixture begins to thicken. Then add 4 to 5 cups lightly packed Spring-time snow (which has a little higher water content than winter) and mix until blended to your desired consistency. I would think this recipe is best consumed in Spring, instead of in the dead of winter anyway. Regardless, make the needed adjustments on the snow, we started out with 3 cups but ended up adding more to thicken it up a bit and reduce the sweetness. It was eaten quickly, not only because it needed to be, but because it was yummy to our tummies!

  

Snow update: here are some pictures taken around 3:30. The snow continues to fall steadily, we have around 18 or 19 inches as of right now, totally awesome! We love being snowed in!

 

 

 

 

SNOW DAY!

We have an official snow day, well, not according to Tate’s school, yet anyway. Our local news website said they are still open. I called to make sure and the teacher who answered said none of the other teachers could make it in. So we decided to not risk the weather. All the better, I have a fun snow day planned!

First, more pictures. Here is the snow around 6:30 this morning.

 

 

 

 

 

Here it is again around 9 AM. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our first snow day activity was to make a snow globe with little rocks, plastic animals, water and glitter. It was fun to make, but it didn’t stick together as well as I had hoped. I am not sure glue guns are the best crafting tool anymore, I need to work on getting more “advanced” supplies. And it leaked! The next one will be better!!

Then we read the two snow books that we have in our collection, which excellent books indeed:

(I will have to work on building our collection of snow day books for next year, reading about snow days during a snow day, how fun!).

And now, Tate is playing with “snow” (aka packing peanuts) in his room with his bulldozers and dump trucks.

When Chase wakes up, the next items on our agenda is to make snow ice cream, snow maple taffy and put together a lunch picnic downstairs in front of the pellet stove!