Snow Day!

And here's what you can do with a foot of snow . . . and should I say, what a foot of snow can do! These pics still don't even do it justice. (Our neighbor across the street lost significant branches, not good, not good.) We are so thankful the power lines did not snap!

The Snow of All Snows

At 10 p.m. on Wednesday evening, I stayed up to watch Pete on the news (he's the weather man). I'd heard a rumor from here and there that we might get some snow. Pete calmly stated we'd be looking at 1-3 inches. It was supposed to rain most of the morning, turning over to rain/ice by noon, and then all snow around 3 p.m. on Thursday.

But what really happened was . . . .

It started snowing at 2:15 a.m. on Thursday morning, and stopped around 4:00 a.m. on Friday morning. The official total from DFW airport at that time was 12.4 inches, shattering the record for the largest one-storm snowfall in DFW history (which previously was a bit over 7 inches).

This pictures are from my photo shoot around noon, and then again at 2 p.m. We only had around 4 and 6 inches, respectively at those times. And I thought I was in winter wonderland heaven.

Until . . . .

Earlier that morning, I had heard a terrible noise--easily identifiable as a tree crashing to the ground. Thankfully, it was not a whole tree, but a couple large branches from our neighbor's tree. And thankfully again, they did not damage anything, but landed nicely on the driveway. So, when I ventured out again at 2 p.m., I was terrified to see SEVERAL of our trees nearly touching the ground. In a panic, I started shaking snow off limbs like you've never seen. Of course, this mean I was getting pummeled by snow from on high. S-O-A-K-E-D. Not until I saw my neighbor doing such with a broom, that I grabbed a hoe and started shaking higher and heavier. While we only lost a handful of limbs, mostly minor, I'm not so sure how my shrubs are going to recover from this. They are very weighted down . . . .

So, these are my "yesterday" pictures, when the snowfall total was a mere 6 inches. I'll post the today pics, where my ruler indicated 9.5 by my office door. Lord knows it's more in the middle of the yard! I just won't venture out there!

We know someone who likes chocolate

Christmas, in review

A few months late. :-)

Although Bryan was on-call the entire Christmas weekend, we still had a lovely time. We celebrated the season with our good friends in town. They cooked a to-die-for authentic Italian meal (still dreaming about it)! The evening entertainment was little Luci showing us how MUCH she could eat and how artistic she was by decorating her outfit with food (pictures to follow on the next post.)

God also came through with a lovely snow on Christmas eve, lasting through the weekend. Thanks for that, by the way.

The pictures are from that snow and from our Christmas decor. You'll notice the tree is different from last year. Bryan and I have different tastes in trees. I prefer the large tree with multi-colored lights and any and all ornaments; he prefers slender trees with white lights and only gold, red, and silver ornaments. Click here to see his version.