Ah, Springtime (posted by Lani)

First of all, let me confirm that despite the reservations I expressed in my last post I did make it down the mountain and made my plane to Florida. Of course the first thing we did was to go to Hunt’s Oyster Bar and do our best to eat our body weight in oysters. Let me tell you, Alex is an oyster-eating boy! It was a great trip; Dad's surgery went well, he and Mom are both doing well, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend time with them, with Laurie and Alex, and with Jim.

I came back home Sunday night, almost two weeks ago now. The weather wasn’t too bad, we had a little snow but nothing major, and yay! Don was in Denver teaching a course! Ann flew in on Wednesday and I got to pick her up at the airport and enjoy a nice lunch with the two of them. They extended their trip through Sunday so that we could spend some time together after Steve got back into town Friday night, and we all looked forward to a fun weekend. Then came The Storm.

It snowed. Oh, did it snow.

I drove down the mountain through the storm to get to the airport on Friday night to pick Steve up (Yes, that was stupid. Very stupid. But I wanted him home, he’d been gone for two weeks.). Going back up the mountain was ... interesting. We managed, very slowly and very very carefully, to get almost all the way home before our car got stuck. We only managed that because all the power in Coal Creek Canyon was off, and the plows were trying to keep the road open enough to get the power trucks through, but hey we took it and ran with it, at least as far as we could. Once we were well and truly stuck, we left the car (seriously, we were close to home or we wouldn’t have done it) and trudged the rest of the way home by flashlight through a heavy snowfall, in snow that ranged from knee deep (where it had been plowed earlier) to waist deep (where it hadn’t). Fun. We got home absolutely exhausted and chilled to the bone, but we were home.

It continued to snow all night, and early Saturday morning we awoke to this. That lump? Here, let me give you a hint. This is what that lump looked like on Friday before I left for the airport.

That’s right, that lump is our other car. You know, the one that didn’t get stuck in the snow. Relatively speaking, of course. And it continued to snow.

And how deep did the snow get? Well … pretty deep. I’d say it was perfect weather to sit on the couch and just look out the window, but … the windows are kind of blocked. That’s not drift, by the way, and that isn’t snow that’s fallen off the roof – that’s just how deep the snow was when these pictures were taken (yes, it got deeper -- we got about 4' of snow in 48 hours). We got up early on Saturday and, in the still-falling, ever-deepening snow, we went and dug out our stuck car and with the assistance of a couple of neighbors unstuck it and got it out of the middle of the road and a little closer to home. Neighbor Mike has a small snowplow (handy, that!) and he plowed the road enough for a car to get through -- and we had just come home to defrost and prepare for the larger task of digging out our driveway and trying to actually get the car HOME when we saw someone trudging down the (narrow, deep) path we had shoveled towards our door. And who was it? Ann and Don! Truly, this is sisterly and brother-in-lawly (is that even a word? I guess it is now) love. They had driven up the mountain and come to help us dig out! OK, so maybe that wasn’t really the original plan, but it sure is what they got to do.

I hope Ann’s pictures turned out, because she took some good ones while she was here. Don and Steve shoveled and snow-blowed; Ann and I knitted; we went up to the Wondervu Café and were joined by our fun and fabulous neighbors, Tom and Margie, and had a lovely lunch and a pitcher of margaritas (it’s amazing what they were able to put on the table even though the entire neighborhood had no power); we came home, Don and Steve talked geek talk, Ann and I knitted more, and then, sadly, Don and Ann had to leave; it was still snowing, a cloud had moved in and visibility was the pits, and they had a long drive ahead of them and an early flight Sunday. We hated to see them leave and we do hope they’ll come back soon – we promise we’ll do our best to have more power, more margaritas, and less shoveling if you do, Annie!

Our power continued to be off-and-on through early this week, and our internet didn’t come back until Friday night. Tons and tons of trees and limbs down all over, and now that the snow is starting to melt the people in lower areas of the canyon are having some flooding issues (NOT a problem we suffer from!). Interestingly, we’re supposed to be getting more snow tonight. Ah, springtime.