The Beauty of Ice

As winter storms pound much of the nation, we are fortunate to only have had some freezing rain during the night...which, for us personally, meant that we had a new kind of beauty to see in the morning as the ice coated every branch, every blade of grass, every leaf, every wire in our fence, etc...but the temperature warmed up enough today to melt all the ice, and none of our plans for today got cancelled. A perfect storm--with all benefits and no disadvantages? For us, maybe, but there have definitely been lots of tree branches downed by the ice and wind in this area--and perhaps even more serious damage of which I am unaware.

The most exciting part of the storm for us was the power outage we had during the night last night. I woke up around 12:30 a.m. and was so disoriented by the lack of normal night appearance in our room that it took me a minute or two to figure out where I was! Later in the night, Josiah had the same thing happen to him when he awoke suddenly in his pitch-black room which seemed so different than his normal room with Christmas candle in the window, lit clock on the dresser, etc. He called out, "Mommy!" And I woke up and hurried to him to explain what was going on and let him know that everything was OK. He said, "I thought I was inside a fish!!!" :) He was quickly comforted and was reassured even more when I suggested that he keep his special flashlight in bed with him so he could use that if he needed it.

~ icicles on a tree branch...I found it challenging to take good pictures of the ice, but at least these pics convey the idea of the winter wonderland we had this morning
~ more little icicles

~ ice on holly leaves

~ after we got home from our church service, Jeff took this picture of the view of the mountain we see from our front window...the trees on the mountain all looked silvery and frosty, and the clouds were so interesting as they swept across the mountain