Tuesday afternoon, schools were cancelled and Greg was told his work was going to be closed. The forecast was calling for lots of freezing rain and ice, so we knew that we were going to be stuck inside for a few days and that we might lose power.
The boys were so excited to see the snow on the ground Wednesday morning. But, it was just a little bit of snow, covered in a huge layer of ice. Definitely not something they could go out and play in. But, they understood and didn't beg to go outside. I had stocked up on kids movies from Redbox on Tuesday and I gave them their Valentine's gifts from my parents early, so we did pretty good on Wednesday.
My parents got the boys two Melissa and Doug toys for Valentine's day. They got the pizza kit for Christmas and LOVE it. They pretend it's birthday cake, so for Valentine's day, they got the birthday cake set and the cookie set.
They had so much fun playing with these.
The ice really weighed down the trees. There's tons of trees and branches down all over Augusta, at one point 85% of the entire county was out of power. This is our neighbors tree on our fence.
This is the damage it did to our fence. Not bad, especially compared to the massive amount of damage that other people had.
I'm so glad this tree didn't break on the boys playhouse. One big limb fell, but didn't hit the playhouse
We decided to bake cupcakes with the boys and then decorate them. They had so much fun helping me in the kitchen. I gave each boy a cupcake and a dollop of frosting so they could decorate their cupcake and then eat it. Carter was so cute and careful with his.
Greg did such a good job. ;)
And this one just took the knife and scooped all the frosting directly into his mouth!! haha. I got so tickled at him just eating the frosting until I realized we were iced in with a 3 year old that had just ate spoonful after spoonful of straight frosting. I put a video on my youtube page of what frosting does to Evan.
I'm so glad we gave the boys these gifts early, it's what kept them entertained all day.
Wednesday night, after bath was done, we lost power. We read the boys a story in the dark and then about 5 minutes after putting them to bed, the power came on. I figured we were going to lose it. My parents, sister and several friends on Facebook had already lost theirs. Greg and I watched tv and relaxed and then as we were getting ready for bed, about 10pm, we lost power again. We didn't get it back until the next evening about 5:00ish.
We were all able to sleep pretty good, but when we woke up it was so cold in our house. I was freezing and cabin fever had set in for all of us. Greg decided to go outside and get the ice/snow off our cars and charge his phone on his car charger. I figured since the cars were running anyways, me and the boys might as well warm up and I could charge my phone while they watched tv in the van. It felt so good to be in the warm car.
This is how thick the ice was on the car, Greg put his thumb there for reference.
The boys were not the least bit interested in watching tv, they enjoyed watching greg get all the ice off our vehicles.
And writing on the windows with their fingers.
The neighbors tree fell on Greg's car. This picture was taken after Greg pulled is car back. There was such a thick layer of ice, that the tree didn't end up doing any damage to Greg's car.
We saw several people driving through our neighborhood and our street didn't look icy, just slushey. So, we decided to drive to the end of the neighborhood and see how the roads were. The main road was completely clear, so we drove around to see if any restaurants were open. Most had lost power, but we did find a McDonald's that every single person in Augusta was at. The line was out the door, but they had an amazing play area that was completely empty. So, Greg took the boys in there to play and they played hard while I waited in line and on our food for like, an hour. All they had was chicken nuggets, Mcchickens, and fries, which was fine. We were happy to have warm food and a place for the boys to run around. When we left it was started to get crazy, the play area had filled up, people were starting to seem mad about the wait, etc. so we decided it was a good time to go home and nap.
The McDonalds we went to had a tree house play area that the boys LOVED, we didn't even know that mcd's had a play area.
While we were gone, another tree in our yard fell.
This is what one street in our neighborhood looked like.
You can see all the power trucks parked in the grocery store parking lot, there were tons of them.
A poor house in our neighborhood had a tree fall on it. I'm so glad we didn't have that happen.
Even with our little trip out, we were starting to lose our minds. It's awful not having any power.
After the boys woke up from their nap, we decided to make another trip out. We got a little ways down the road and I realized how thirst I was, so Greg turned around and went in the house to get me some water (wasn't that sweet) and our power was back on!! We ended up going to the grocery store to get a few things because all the food in our fridge had to be thrown away because of how long our power was out. When we came back home, our house had enough time to heat up and it felt so great. My parents stopped by to get a pot of coffee because they still didn't have power, we let the boys watch some tv, took warm showers, cooked some warm food. It was SO nice to have power.
Greg's work closed Thursday and Friday, so Friday morning, we took the boys to the mall. It was still icy out and they couldn't play in the yard and they needed to get some energy out. Evan had been asking to go to the mall and chick-fil-a since Wednesday morning, but those places were closed until Friday. The boys played so good at the mall and you can just tell they needed to run around. My sister came over while we were gone and showered and charged her phone because she still didn't have power!! She ended up getting it back Friday afternoon.
The mall wasn't very busy. I was shocked. With the roads being completely clear, so many people still being out of power and kids out of school, I thought the mall play area was going to be madness, but it wasn't.
The boys wore their Valentine's shirts that they got from Grandma and Grandpa Westover, which they love.
Friday night, we took the boys to Chick-fil-a to play some and then Greg and I got hibachi to go and eat at home. After we put the boys to bed, we watched tv (we're so romantic) and then when Greg was going to bed, we had an earthquake. Seriously. I knew exactly what it was since we had been in an earthquake in Virginia. I read a report that said it was 4.4 and the epicenter was in Edgefield, SC and I also read reports that said it was a 5.4 in Augusta, but that was right after it happened and haven't seen that number again. Either way, it was mild compared to the one we had in VA. And even the one in VA was mild to people in California, so it was bad, but just absolutely crazy that we had one. Greg and I were actually talking about how we experienced some pretty bad weather (the winter of 2009 was one of the worst as far as snowfall in VA) and earthquakes, etc and joked that we brought the bad winters with us, so it's crazy that a few hours after having that conversation, we have an earthquake in Georgia.
It has been a long few days, although I really don't have any room to complain, my parents lost power way before us and they still don't have it back as I type this on Saturday afternoon. (over 72 hours without power) I'm pretty sure I've been ending every post lately with "I can't wait for spring" or something like that, but seriously, I'm so ready for spring!!!
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