white christmas 2012

The only way I'm going to get this done in one sitting is in seriously abbreviated recap-style. Here we go.

Pre-Christmas: family came to visit. I love them. (not pictured: Jeff).We ate, opened presents, ate, hung out, went shopping, and ate.

Christmas Eve: we made cookies. Sam mostly ate sprinkles, with a spoon, like cereal. We went to church, where Sam only wanted to sit with Dobbs and Noah burned himself with candle wax. We ate dinner at Mimi & Papa Jim's. We exchanged gifts with our little fam of 4. Noah was thrilled to give Sam the Build-a-Bear that has Noah's voice saying "I love you, Sam" when you squeeze his hand. My heart melted.

Christmas morning: Noah burst in our room at 5:50 exclaiming "Santa came! He brought me a soccer goal!" Lovely. We viewed and played with Santa's goodies. We surprised the boys with a big goodie from us (Cars race track and lots of new Cars). `We went to Mimi & Papa Jim's and opened a trillion gifts, ate breakfast, played, then ate a huge Christmas lunch. We sang Happy Birthday to Jesus.

Christmas afternoon/evening: Here's where it gets dicey. It started raining, which quickly turned to freezing rain and sleet. After a short nap at Mar Mar & Papa D's, we woke Sam up to start opening gifts. We took one picture, of the very first present.

Then about halfway through gift exchanging, out goes the power. We rapidly finished up with flashlights. 5 crockpots full of soup sat untouched. Snow started falling. We all gathered up what we could and headed home, to check on the fate of our own power. At our house, lights were on. Josh braved the rapidly-deteriorating road conditions to go back and pick up Mama Dot to bring her to our house. The boys went to bed, we settled on the couch watching to pouring snow out the window. 9:00--out go our lights. We bundled up, gathered flashlights and blankets, snuck in to cover the boys with extra warmth, and headed to bed. We woke the next morning to a 55-degree house and 10 inches of this stuff outside:

 Papa Jim & Mimi came to the rescue with their 4-wheel drive, picking up Mama Dot and taking her back to my parents, where they at least had a roaring fire going (our fireplace hasn't been cleaned, so we were scared to use it). After a couple rounds of Headbanz and lots of back and forth, we decided to head toward the fire ourselves.

This story could go on forever. But at about 5:00, just as it was starting to get dark and depressing, we got word that the lights at our house were back on! Back home we went! We were so, so lucky. Our power was out for less than 24 hours, while many people  went 4-6 days without it. We were the only ones in our families with power for about 2 days.So the next two days were a blur of playing in the snow and serving as a warming/sleeping/cooking/electronic charging station for lots of family members. I actually quite enjoyed that part! Lots of extra family time this Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Snowmaggedon 2012!