Waiting for the Big Snow Storm

We drove to Napa on business last week which normally would be a beautiful drive. We were accompanied by a whole lot of rain while traveling both ways. We arrived home and Mother Nature stopped raining just long enough for us to unpack. Little did we know that it had actually snowed in Park Sierra while we were gone, but it only stayed on the ground a few hours. The next morning we found out that our daughter's place up the hill from us had over a foot of snow and a second larger storm was heading this way. Since her whole house is electric, we loaded up our generator so that she'd have something to start up the pellet stove should there be a power outage. Then we started thinking that maybe there would be a chance that we'd get snowed in and how fun "getting snowed in" would be, so we decided to invite ourselves up for a "sleep-over" and just survive the storm with them. They said "Sure!" So that's just what we did —in great anticipation of the predicted storm.

Jen said that quite a bit of the snow had already melted by the time we arrived. She said the hills in the background were all white with snow-covered trees. She love sitting by the fireplace, nice and warm and cozy, watching the fluffy snow fall outside. I took these pictures upon our arrival. When we left this morning there was no snow to be seen!

Planning that we'd be forced to stay a few days, we brought some food to share, a quilt top to work on, our computers, the generator with lots of fuel, a portable propane heater, and in town we bought our first set of chains for the truck (just in case!) We've spent since Friday waiting for the big storm. And we waited. And we waited. And all we got was lots of rain last night which finally washed all the snow away! The big snow storm —which was in the forecast to come from Alaska and Canada and supposedly much bigger than the first one —never showed up.

But we had a great time with Jen and the kids, cooking and sharing food, enjoying good conversation, watching some TV, perusing a chicken catalog while dreaming of the fresh eggs and organic chickens they want to raise in the spring, spotting a small herd of deer led by an 8-point buck stroll through their yard, helping the boys with their homework, watching Miss Michigan win the Miss America contest (even though we were all hoping Miss California would win), cheering the boys on as they played in a couple of exciting basketball games at the highschool, and I even got the quilt top finished.

Life is good!