Pardon Moi: The "Monster Storm"

I finally tuned in to the national news today to find that this had been dubbed the "Monster Storm." My apologies to the creative genius who thought that one up for merely calling it the Storm of the Century.

Mercifully, we did not lose power last night, thanks to a sudden warmup for about three hours that helped take some of the ice off the trees and power lines. It was a good thing, too, because shortly after that the winds were gusting in excess of 45 miles an hour. That likely would have done us in if there had been any more ice on the lines.

After determining that the storm was mostly past us, I gave the go ahead to eat the crockpot full of white chicken chili that's been cooking and/or staying hot since Monday evening. I made it with the plan that we'd at least get one hot meal after the power went out, so every mealtime that we had power we ate something else. I learned two things: 1) A crockpot full of white chicken chili is apparently pretty good insurance against power outages and 2) that stuff is just as yummy after slow cooking for three days as it is on day one.

The wind blew lots of little branches off the trees in our yard and enough ice into our bedroom window to keep us awake and wondering if a window was going to break. But thank heavens the power stayed on.

The streets and our driveway are a sheet of glass still today, and then Mother Nature kicked a little snow in our faces just to make sure that we got the message she's in charge.

We heard you, Mama, loud and clear!

Jeff and I have been shoveling the drive ourselves this year, but today we called the plow guy. You saw in yesterday's video that it was almost impossible to chip even a little hole in the ice with a shovel. Turns out you couldn't chip a hole in it with a snowplow either. Poor guy's wheels were spinning and he was getting nowhere. He dumped a little salt and left without charging us. We'll see what that looks like tomorrow.

I suspect we'll either have to wait for the spring thaw to clear it or set up the nets and teach the kids to play hockey. I'm sure Sam can play goalie even with his broken leg.

On the plus side, Phil says that spring's right around the corner. I'm pretty sure even that groundhog is bright enough to know that any other prediction may have cost him his life this year!

Now that the danger's passed I've turned the heat down. I was keeping it fairly tropical on the theory that the warmer it was in here the longer it would take to really get cold if we lost power. I was perfectly comfortable. The children, on the other hand, were begging to wear shorts and summer jammies!

Since I've been posting video updates of this storm, here's today's video of the aftermath.

All in all, we got off pretty easy. And since we prepared for the worst, I've got lots of meals packed up and in the freezer.

That should be a big help now that I'm spending 80 percent of my day with Sam on my hip or on my back. It's pretty hard to say no to picking him up when he crawls across the floor then holds up his arms and says, "Mama, can you carry me?"

Sam took a few tentative steps on his cast today, so for the sake of my back I'm hoping he can walk on it pretty well by next week. Although it is kind of nice to have one of the triplets slowed down a little bit!