It was a wild week from Thursday night into Monday evening.  We managed to catch that ice storm which came through Thursday night into Friday.  I prayed heavily to have us keep power through the night and God answered my prayer, but He does have a sense of humor and our power went out Friday afternoon until Monday evening.  I guess I need to be specific in my prayers!  I took loads of pictures and it's hard to choose which ones to show here.  I must say God's art work was intensely beautiful.  Everything looked like it was made of glass.

We did survive the ice without power, but my wonderful husband had to put gas in our generator every hour and forty five minutes around the clock.  This generator has a small gas tank and we were thankful to have it since temperatures dove into the minuses with screaming winds.  Without it we would've been in deep trouble.  All this did put a damper on my last minute Christmas baking and such since my oven is electric, microwave, dishwasher, well pump, etc.  You get the picture.  We were trying not to tax the generator and just let it work the things that were important such as the furnace, well pump, and a rotation on the freezers and fridges we have.  We used lights at a minimum, so instead we used our oil lamps and candles in the evenings.  So what did we do for fun?  Hmmm, well we read books aloud, I made a hat on my knitting loom thing and made a couple of fleece scarves.  Hubby just managed the generator and oh yeah, fix some burst pipes in one of the barns. Ugh.  One thing after another.  I just tried to keep busy.  I was thankful to God for showing us our weak spots in times like this.  It was an eye opener.  I thought we were pretty well prepared for emergencies, but we saw how we lacked.  So I tried to keep my spirits up by giving thanks to God and my hubby pumped up.  It is a bit daunting to tend that generator when it's -20 degrees outside with 30 mile an hour winds every 2 hours.

It all came to a stop by Monday evening and we had our power restored. Yeah!  The first thing I did was take a shower.  We avoided showers so as not to tax the generator with the well pump.  I did manage to get caught up a bit for Christmas.  I didn't sweat it since I knew we weren' t having any company that I knew of, but I wanted to be ready just in case.  We did end up with a lovely Christmas nonetheless.  On Christmas Eve, we went to church and sang songs and held candles.  Then we asked a lady from church to join us in our eating of Chinese food on Christmas Eve.  Then we went home and opened our presents.  It was really nice.  The next day I made a breakfast cake for us, the boys went into the hayloft to shoot their new BB guns and my dad came for a visit and stayed for dinner.  We had a joyus holiday after all.

I give praise to God for all the blessings he has bestowed on us this year.  It's been quite the adventure and never dull, but we are so thankful for all of it.  God is good and wonderful and a provider of all things we need.  Happy Birthday Jesus.