It’s already the end of Jan ! Where does time go? With our crazy weather this year one knows it hasn’t been a great year. We are in the middle of another snow storm 8-12 inches are expected today then turning to rain. Oh Please don’t let it be freezing rain. Back in December we were without power for 5 days. Norm and I stayed here and kept a fire going in a wood stove we have in our fireplace. We have a sofa bed in the family room so we were able to sleep right there to feed the fire at night and stay warm. We were running out of wood, and our Son in Law Tom brought us a load of wood down from Northern NH. They were lucky enough not to loose power. We could have gone and stayed with our Daughter and Family, but that left the house to suffer the elements. It did get down to 10º one night, that wasn’t so much fun.
http://www.wmur.com/nh-ice-storm/index.html
Friends got their power back and offered a hot meal and hot showers ! Thank you Stephanie and Mike !!!! Boy that was nice after 3 days of no showers. I guess I missed a nice cup of hot coffee in the morning the most. I had asked Norm to pick me up a cup on his way home the first morning, coming back from Hooksett, of course he waited until he got back to Salem to do so, of course Most of the town had NO POWER ! No Coffee for Me! We did find a Dunkin Doughnuts not far from the house the next morning so that was nice to have something hot to drink. Our Manual coffee pot was at the boat of course ! I guess I need to keep a spare one here, on second throught No I don’t ever want that to happen again.
We ended up going to find batteries for the little portable TV, and found the Mall open ! We stopped in about 11:30 AM and decided we might as well get something to eat. The Food Court was full of people trying to stay warm and get something to eat too ! We ended up at a resturant in the mall and only had to wait 15 min. for a table. As they were full too. I guess everybody decided to shop and eat to stay warm since the Rockingham Park Mall had Power.
I still had Christmas gifts to get and wrap, with no power you can’t see anything well enough to get much done. We were leaving for Sarah and Toms on the 17th of Dec for Bens Holiday Concert and exchange gifts. This year it was our turn to to to PA to be with Paul and Family, so lots needed to get done so we could leave on the 21st for PA.
We had a good trip down to PA finally got gifts done and packed and ready to go. We had a nice breakfast before leaving town, we had a snowstorm the day before and were not planning on leaving too early so the road crews could get the roads cleared well before we too off. Glad we did ,DPW crews were still trying to clean up the sides of I93 as we were leaving New England. It was a long day, but we arrived in Lancaster County PA about 6 PM with two grandchildren all excited to see Grandma and Papa. We were glad to see them too. We celebrated Christmas with them and I stayed on a week longer to babysit the kids while on School vacation, while Norm drove back to NH. It was nice to be able to spend time with Cassidy and Dylan and Paul that week. I flew home on Jan 6th,, tired but a good tired always after having special time with the Grandchildren.
I finally got all of my Christmas decorations down and put away. It is always hard to play catch-up when I get home and Norm has been here alone for a week. But all in all it all gets done in time. Now maybe I can get serious with my Doll making. I started a snowlady before we lost power, but have not had time to even think about getting the time to pick up where I left off. I did find the styrafoam balls I was looking for, for her head ! So I guess maybe there was a reason I had not found time to work on her. I had looked for the size I needed at AC Moore/Crafts, before Christmas, and they had NONE ! Yikes what is a gal to do. Seems this always happens to me for some strange reason, I can never find the size I need.
That is all for now, I plan on adding pictures as soon as I get them downloaded on the computer, First I have to install the software I got with my new camera.

aftermath of the ice storm in Dec 08