Home, Sweet Home!

The last few days have been a little crazy around here. We essentially moved out of our house and in with friends for the last two days. We got a big snowstorm (ok, big by Southern standards - my family up north would call this storm nothing more than a dusting) on Sunday night. As usual the hint of snow turned our local newscasters in a panicked frenzy to see who could have the most over-top, unnecessary coverage of storm prep being done by the city of Charlotte. They were predicting 3-6 inches of snow and a "disastrous" Monday morning commute. I laughed it off - this sort of over reaction down here usually comes with 20 minutes of snow flurries and absolutely no accumulation. But about 5pm on Sunday when it started coming down hard and by 7pm when we had an inch of snow already, I was starting to get excited about the prospect of a real snowstorm.

My enthusiasm was tempered when around 8pm I heard a crash and our whole house shook. I looked outside saw this:

A power pole completely down in our backyard. In my head, I was like "whoa, the power pole is down" and then suddenly I thought "but our power is still on". So then I look in the driveway and the power line running to our house is sitting across our driveway.

So now I am freaking out...I'm thinking having a live power line running across your driveway to your back door is not such a great thing. We call the power company and are told not to leave the house and they will have someone out in 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, no one is there so we call back. Now we are told they have no idea when someone can come out and that we can leave the house, just don't touch the line. With snow accumulating (probably 2 inches at this point), the thought that when the power company does show up we are probably going to be without power and that we are now having power surges with a live wire running into our house, we made the decision to find other housing for the night. At 10 pm at night, in driving snow and on snow covered roads, we headed out to a friend's house about 15 minutes away.

My mother-in-law has a wonderful friend and former neighbor here in Charlotte that was kind enough to let us come over. She has a super cute little granddaughter, Braxton, and therefore, has a whole nursery set up at her house for her visits. Here is a picture of Joseph and Braxton during a recent play date:

We had our own little suite with two bedrooms and a bathroom and couldn't have been made to feel more at home. It was a blast from the past for Richard as he spent a lot of time there as a kid (he grew up just a few houses down the road). Joseph took it all in stride although it was a beast getting him back to bed at 11:30 pm after being forced to wake up and head to someone Else's house in the middle of his sleep. We woke up in the morning, to this paltry little snow covering:

(This is clearly from our friends house - you will not find a pool and pool house in my backyard!)

Joseph had a great time playing with all the toys and crawling around such expansive square footage (a luxury our house does not offer!). He discovered a staircase for the first time and set a personal record for climbing the whole staircase (17 steps) in just 1 minute 20 seconds (we have a video of this to be posted soon). As much fun as we had, we were very excited when we got word late this afternoon that our power was back on. Our house is just now getting toasty warm, but its nice to be on my couch and getting ready to sleep in my bed.

Thanks to Vicki, Charlie & Logan for their amazing hospitality!