He's all grown up!

Our little boy is all grown up! Max will have his first birthday tomorrow! Boy does time fly. Even though his is a big boy now, he will always be our little puppy. That is what Shannon was telling him this morning. Tomorrow the birthday celebration will begin! Yeah Max!

The Purr of the Generator Running...

A freak October snow storm.  That's what the local weather men are saying.  At least that is what I hear the local weather men are saying.  We lost our power Saturday evening-cable too.  The battery backups for Internet, telephone, and cell towers went out Sunday evening.  Ross' cell phone came back up in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.  So for one full day we had no means of communication other than knocking on a door or writing a letter (I still don't think I've seen our mail person since last week though).  We have a fireplace and a generator so we are warm and cozy, our bellies are full, and most importantly, we don't stink to high heaven.

It was a lot of snow, being October or not.  I took the measurement in the picture at about eleven Saturday night.  There is a quarter inch of space at the beginning of the ruler so there was fifteen and three quarter inches of snow on our picnic table.  It continued to snow until about three in the morning so it is easy to guesstimate that sixteen inches fell in about fourteen hours.  What made this storm so bad was that so many trees still had leaves on them.  You could hear all kinds of cracking and thuds from branches breaking and falling.  We had a tree snap in two and fall into our orchard between the chicken coop and a bee hive and right on our electric fence.  It landed on two new fruit trees we just planted this past Spring (they both made it through).  This was just one of several trees and large limbs that fell on our property. Needless to say, we spent the next day with chainsaw in hand.  At least we're ahead for next year's firewood!

Of course we are just two of many people in the same boat.  We reached out to various members of our church and neighborhood making sure they were OK and if not to come over to our house.  Yesterday I was at the local hardware store looking for oil and an oil filter for our generator (both sold out go figure).  While waiting patiently for my turn I ended up in a conversation with a man who just moved to the area a month ago.  He bought a house just around the corner from us.  He said he had no heat so I told him if he needed a place to stay just come over.  Later I thought, "wow, he must think I'm a freak inviting a perfect stranger over."  Possibly.  In realty it's just I love living in my small town, and I love that people are in each other's business here, and the best way to be neighbors is to be neighborly, to genuinely care for the people that surround you.  That doesn't necessarily mean you have to like them, although we are blessed because we have yet to meet a neighbor we haven't liked.

Today we got our phone and Internet back so I am finally able to write thanks to our generator and its ever present humming purr in the background.  The outage has us feeling a bit old-timey lately.  Mainly from our weird, power outage chores, like bringing in the daily firewood and trimming the candle wicks.  I was feeling that Ross was missing TV so this morning I read him some short stories as he cooked breakfast.  It was a good time.  Taking it all in I can say we are making do with the situation given to us, which is the best I guess anyone can do!