A belated Happy Valentines Day! & Snow report

If you've been watching the news, you'll know that Anne Arundel County is the only one in Maryland with significant loss of power due to yesterday's storm-and we were part of that "lucky" crowd. Fortunately, James had an abundant supply of firewood split, stacked and tarped in the back yard, so we were able to keep warm. It took a while to get the house warmed up after the fire went out last night (gee, Samuel, why didn't you rebuild it when you got up at 2?), but nothing like those folks who didn't have a fireplace! We have gas appliances so we still had plenty of hot water and could cook on the stove. A corded phone replaced the powerless cordless phone, to keep us in touch with the world.

It was amazing to notice how much access to the internet and wandering around with the phone have become a part of our lives. Those were actually bigger challenges than the heat. That and the twins' boredom. . .
Had it been just snow, Samuel would've been out sledding, but it was 3/4" of bumpy ice atop the two+ inches of snow, then studded with chips of ice that fell from the trees as the wind blew. Without the wind, we would probably not have lost power. Fortunately, we seem to have weathered the storm without losing many trees. Or maybe that's unfortunate, since we need to replenish our severely depleted wood pile.
Miriam's greatest hardship was going two days without her radio, even if I enjoyed the quiet! She was home with a slight fever and headache Friday, but that didn't keep her from listening to her music. She was feeling better by the time she headed over to her dad's for the weekend, but was home again on Monday and Tuesday with a stomach bug. I was definitely ready for the music to go off. And she has the choice of headphones or no music tomorrow-the third day out of school for this storm, and the last of their allotted snow days-all used in February!

I'm going to turn this computer over to James to figure out why I can't connect to any of the other computers on our network to upload pictures. I'll add pictures later.