Laden with Ice

This morning the world is heavy laden with ice and snow. The branches sag downward under their burden. But the beauty of the snow clinging to every branch and needle is always so beautiful. We didn't get as much ice as was predicted, but the local school still shut down for the day, I think. My neighbor is home, so I am assuming that the school was closed. Last night, I was visiting my parents and when I left for home the icy rain was pelting down. My cheeks stung every time a piece hit them. I hurriedly scraped the ice off my car so I could see on the way home. I drove extra careful, even though it seemed the ice was turning into rain the further I got from the lake. Upon arriving home, I moved all the meat from our upstairs freezer into the basement chest freezer, just in case we lost power. That way we would be less likely to have lots of spoilage. But needless to say, we didn't lose our power and I'm happy to say, it was all an unnecessary precaution. Last time we had an ice storm, the power was out for nearly a week. I was still living at home where we heated the house with a wood stove. We ended up heating everything with the wood stove. We cooked meals on top of it, boiled water for our dishes on it and I don't remember what else. But our wood stove was a "life saver". That ice storm left so much ice that we scooped it up off the ground into our coolers so we could keep the food from the refrigerator cold. We were quite the innovative family, don't you think? If the power had gone out today, I don't think I would've been able to do quite as well. After all, we ran out of fire wood for our wood stove last month and you just can't boil water quite as all on top of a gas furnace. We might've had to move back home for a couple days :)