More snow and cold!

As you can tell, yesterday was another snowy day here as was today. The stuff we have now, isn't going anywhere for a while. Jim took the kids outside yesterday even though it was very cold and very windy. They didn't stay out too long but you can't deny a kid from the pacific northwest a chance to play in the snow when you have it. Although these kids get it more often than others in the area since we are at about 1300 feet in elevation, they don't love it any less. It was chilly though around 18 to 20 degrees and the wind was blowing up here about 35 mph. The snow was certainly not falling, it was go every which way but down. They got to play crazy outside with daddy, do a little sledding, made a couple snow angles and came back in... and didn't ask to go back out again!

Luckily, we ate dinner early last night because with the east wind howling, it knocked our power out for a few hours. We got the stove going and were able to keep the house warm but the wind was scaring the kids even after the power came back on around 9. Rylan actually fell asleep in my arms which he hasn't done in a very long time. It was so nice though, you don't often get that from a big three year old unless they're sick. The combination of cold weather and lack of power froze up the pressure pipes for our water pump so we didn't have decent water pressure at all. So, around 10 pm, Jim trekked down the hill with the 4 wheel drive pick up truck to fix that in um, 12 degree, insanely windy, weather. He was able to hold the switch to fill the tanks in the basement so we had running water and power by the time we got into bed around 10:30 last night. Come to find out though, in that trip down and back up, the 4 wheel drive in the truck managed to get locked so that's not working right either. Of course! Luckily, that's just our back up vehicle and by this morning the road crews had, plowed, sanded and de-iced our hill so taking the car to work was no problem for him. It does seem that when something goes, it all goes though doesn't it?! I got the pump guy out here this afternoon and he explained where the issue really lies and I'll just say that we're lucky that nothing is broken down at the pump because there were frozen pipes, not a frozen switch - so Jim was messing with a whole lot of pressure that in the words of the fatherly pump guy "can often end up going boom, and nobody wants that." Yikes! So, the way to thaw it out is with a torch. Go figure. Who would have thought that using a torch would be safer than flipping a switch!?!