This ICE is not NICE!

This is our poor orange tree. Unfortunately we left it out last night and it was WAY to treacherous outside to try and get it in this morning. So we're just hoping it will survive! The sleet hitting the sky lights woke us up at 4am. I could not believe how hard it was sleeting outside!  The kids were anxious to get outside this morning even though we only had a dusting of snow and then frightening amount of  ice.

I let them go out for a short time, but it was sleeting so hard that they had to come back inside.  They did some improvised ice skating out in our backyard. The ice was really unreal. 

All of us are out of school today of course and although I LOVE being home with Pete and the girls, I get a little stir crazy! It gets much worse when the house gets cluttered. This morning I decided to get the laundry done since I wasn't sure if we'd have power all day. I asked the girls to bring their laundry down to the laundry room. I went to the laundry room to start the laundry and here's what I see:

Seriously? Who hangs their underwear on the laundry room door? I guess it beats the chandelier in the foyer where I once found a pair of Addie's underwear hanging. She said she tried to throw them over the rail to the downstairs and yet they hung precariously from the huge chandelier. She didn't even tell me so we had company for a few days and only later did I realize there was a pair of underwear in my chandelier! I tried to explain it to my cousin's husband, Goran, who is the sweetest Swede ever. He looked at me like "sure they're addie's underwear!" 

Anyhow, I digress. The ice is really rough here so I've been worried all morning about losing power. Then I remembered a box of chocolate coffee truffles my friend Craig brought down last weekend. Suddenly it dawned on me that there's a great bottle of wine in the chiller too! So I did like any good Southern girl. I got myself together, fixed my hair, put on some lip balm and said bring it Mother Nature! In college, I had a Forestry professor who said "Mother Nature is a redheaded bitch".  Well if she is, she's met her match! :)