Ice! We made it through! I may have to change my winter background because I'm tired of ice! And I think the official groundhog said more weeks of winter! Yuck! For those of you who don't live in north Arkansas, we had an ice storm last Tuesday. Trees are down everywhere in several counties across northern AR and electricity has been out and still is for some folks. Our power went out Tuesday afternoon. An inconvenience, yes, especially for someone who relies on machines to live. So, Travis immediately ran over to my parents' house to get the generator running that he hooked up and had ready the night before. Thank you to the Milhollands for letting us borrow their generator while they did without. He and mom got dad's ventilator up and going. Little did we know at the time that they would go without power until Saturday evening!
Travis also got my parents' wood stove going with a fire. They hadn't used it for 20 years or so? He's up on the roof sweeping the chimney as it's sleeting. And the roof is a solid sheet of ice. I watched with one eye open scared he was going to fall off. We cooked a frozen pizza on the fireplace stove. Actually turned out pretty good. Dad's night nurse, Di, spent the week with us also. She didn't leave the house, and couldn't make it home because of all the trees that were down. She lives out in the country.
This is my parents' driveway.
My parents live in the "forest." There are trees everywhere. So, they were all falling. We'd hear a loud bang that sounded like a gunshot, as the tree branches were falling. It'd make mom jump just about
every time. It sounded like someone was jumping on the roof. Travis got them cleared out of the driveway when the ice stopped falling. We were worried an ambulance couldn't get in if we needed one. We filled the generator every two hours with gas. Getting up to do it at nights felt like we had a new baby that we were getting up every few hours for! We were exhausted. And I didn't work half as hard as Travis did, getting us wood, keeping the fire going, and chainsawing down trees. Danny Ponder across the street brought us some gas for our generator. As did, Sarah Barnett that my mom works with...also some yummy warm chicken soup.
Many are still without power over a week later. The neighbor kitty-corner to my parents' house to the south still doesn't and on south from them. The line was drawn right at their house that got electricity. Thank goodness. We are back to normal now. I don't know how people did it in the olden days!
You can see the top of this tree that broke. It wasn't just small limbs breaking, you needed a hard hat to be out there.
"If I had it to do all over, I'd do it all over again." 
