We wanted to go skiing for Spring Break, but also wanted to visit Grandma Dewey, so we decided to drive up to Utah in order to accomplish both.
Driving up to Brighton for our first day of skiing
Visiting Grandma at Karin’s house
Dinner at John’s house
Sunday, February 14 the polar vortex dropped down into Texas and we saw significant snow fall and historically low temperatures.
Monday, the power grid nearly collapsed — our house lost power around 5:30 a.m. and didn’t get it back until 9:15 p.m. Tuesday. Including the two subsequent short-term losses of power, we went without power for more than 40 hours while the temperatures ranged from 9° F when the power went out, to a high of 14° F on Monday, to a low of 3° F Monday night, to a high of 21° F on Tuesday, and finally a temp around 19° F when the power came back on.
Around 11:00 a.m. Monday we decided to pull out the generator to power the two small space heaters we own. We turned on our gas fireplace as well, but it isn’t really designed for outputting heat. Not to mention the 20-foot ceilings in that room are not conducive to heat retention. The three heat sources were enough to maintain a decent temperature in the house on Monday though.
Daddy dug out his old circa 1995 Sno-Tube and by some miracle it still held air. We headed over to the elementary school for some legitimate snow tubing.
Monday night we put mattresses in our room for the kids so that we could put both heaters in that room and turn off the fireplace. We each snuggled down under a pile of blankets with the portable DVD players until drifting off to sleep. Not long after 10:00 the generator sputtered to a halt and we spent the rest of the night without any heat source. It turned out that the generator froze in the frigid temps out on the back patio and we couldn’t get it restarted until around 9:00 Tuesday morning, after the sun warmed it for a while.
Needless to say, the house got COLD! It was somewhere around 40° F Tuesday morning but with the fireplace blaring and the space heaters cooking, we were eventually able to get the main living areas back up to around 50° F by the time we went to bed.
Tuesday morning I really, really needed a shower and I was not about to get naked and wet in our frozen house so I posted on the Relief Society Facebook page, asking if anyone with electricity would let us come take a shower at their home. The first person to respond was Leslie Horn, the Stake communications director who is actually in one of the Keller Wards but monitors each of the Ward pages and so had seen my post. Raine and I went to her home and showered in her guest bathroom just before noon while DJ and Carter kept an eye on the fire and generator. That afternoon, DJ and Carter went over to the Gottfredson’s home to shower. The Gottfredson’s offered us their 5 spare bedrooms for the night, but we decided to stay at our house in order to keep the heat on so the pipes wouldn’t freeze and because we didn’t want to leave Tucker in the cold. A second round of snow was coming Tuesday night so we didn’t know how the roads would be since they were already pretty snow-packed and icy.
We all went to bed early again on Tuesday night because that was the easiest way to stay warm. Carter had been watching a movie on the DVD player and then kneeled to pray and went to brush his teeth. He flipped on the light in the bathroom out of habit and swore it flickered. Sure enough, a few seconds later, everything came back on. I joked with Carter that he should’ve prayer earlier since the power came back on right after he prayed!
January 2-5 we stayed at a cabin in Beavers Bend and hiked around the State Park and reservoir.
January 2 we stopped in Paris, TX for a late lunch.
Hot tubbing (technically “warm” tubbing because Carter doesn’t like hot water) at the cabin.
January 3
January 4
Yes, he fell in
Broken Bow Lake
December 17 at the Gaylord Texan
December 21, the Christmas Star shining above the nativity in our yard (aka the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn)
December 24, Christmas Eve
December 25, Christmas Day
Christmas morning 5k
Christmas morning sprints
Daddy and I made custom light strings for our house this year.
Trying out Daddy’s new fire pit
Raine made the A team and her first cross country meet was December 1.
Place: 17th
Time: 13:46 (1.5 miles)
December 8
Place: 26th
Time: 11:40
December 15
Place: 34th
Time: 12:16
*** UPDATED ***
January 13, 2021
Place: 29th
Time: 11:56
District and Zone Champions (Raine is on the back row in the middle)
Monday, November 2 we drove up to Lawton, OK so that we could explore the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge on November 3, since the kids didn’t have school those days.
Bison
Lost Lake spillway
Prairie dog town
Bison
Longhorn along the road
Driving home through military land
Raine went shopping with her friends Catherine and Maya for her birthday and then enjoyed her favorite food… Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets.
Here are a couple pictures of Raine from the past couple months. She FINALLY figured out how to put in contacts so she doesn’t have to wear glasses any more!!!
Carter told Raine that she looked like a mom on a field trip when she came out in this outfit… I died laughing!
School started on August 17 but the first three weeks were all virtual learning while the campuses put their safety measures in place— plexiglass dividers, hand sanitizer stations, separating desks, etc.
Raine had athletics in the morning in-person, then came home and got online.
I initially set up a table for Carter in my office so that I could keep on eye on him and make sure the was on task and online when he was supposed to be…
…but I quickly realized that that was a TERRIBLE idea and it prevented me from getting any work done, so we moved him to the desk in the kitchen that DJ built.
Virtual school was awful and we couldn’t wait for in-person classes to start! The first day of in-person learning was September 8.
A few days before DJ’s birthday, we had a socially-distance driveway birthday celebration for Evan Eastman’s 40th birthday. We weren’t able to make it to Evan’s Star-Wars-themed drive-by birthday parade, so DJ dressed up when we went over to make up for it!
