Winter Wonderland and Chicken & Dumplins' (heavy on DUMP)

Tom & I went to church Sunday morning in pouring-down rain and very cold wind. My nose was as red as Rudolph's by the time I got to my Sunday School class. Someone even kindly commented on my ruby-red nose. Matched my kitchen. After church we went out to eat at a local restaurant. When we were leaving, we realized the rain had turned to sleet. My first comment, "Oh, no . . . there goes our power." I don't know why, but any time we have the very least bit of unusual weather, my neighborhood block blacks out. Our neighbors across the street have power; our neighbors on the street behind us have power. But our little block of the world is black. So, as we were traveling back home, I was anticipating the inevitable. However, the sleet didn't last long and the rain continued to pour down. I had decided that I was going to try to make Tom's very favorite meal - chicken & dumplins'. You know how messy I get when working with flour. This was a real sacrificial task I took on. My mom made the best chicken & dumplins in the world! Yum. I already had my chicken cooked and ready to be de-boned. Tom went to make hospital visits for church so I was home alone with my chicken and flour. I turned on my praise and worship music & sang with Chris Tomlin, et al., and was having a grand ole time. Years ago Mom wrote down how she made her dish, but I checked out Paula Deen's recipe just for some measurements (Mom rarely measured anything.) As usual, I had flour all over me, the floor, the countertop, the backsplash and anything that was within 10 feet of me.

Ya can't see, but that red tea pot has lots of flour all over it!

By the time Tom got home, I was in the process of cleaning up. He sweetly offered to sweep the floor. Then we both retreated to the den to relax while the dumplins' cooked. We looked outdoors and saw snow! Yippee! It was beautiful. It kept falling and I went outside to take some pictures. Then it was time to eat supper. Good, doughy, delicious Chicken & dumplins'. Well, ya coulda used one of the dumplins as a lethal weapon b/c they were so tough. I was furious. I love to cook, but let something go wrong and I'm ready to get out my semi and destroy the place. Tom tried to assure me that, just maybe, they needed to cook longer. So he patiently cooked them longer (it should take 30 min. or less and it'd already been over an hour.) The pot finally did thicken up a bit, but the dumplins' were still tough. We just left the pot on the stove to cool. Tom ate a bowlful (bless his heart, he did that for me, I'm sure.) I ate peanut butter on crackers.

We heard a noise outside and walked out to see a big limb had fallen close to the house and had brushed Tom's truck. Don't wanna mess with Tom's baby. We have lots of trees in our yard. I tried to get him to move my old car out of the garage and put his truck safely inside. He said that he was just gonna move his truck back several feet and it'd be fine & that's what he did. We went back inside and watched the snow continue to fall. It was getting dark and the snow was absolutely beautiful falling. Then we heard a much louder noise in the same direction as the first noise. We went back outside and saw a huge limb had fallen just where Tom's truck had been before he moved it. Thank the Lord that Tom moved his truck. I grabbed my camera b/c the snow was so beautiful. I must have looked like a weirdo b/c I held a red umbrella above me to protect my new camera from getting wet. And I turned my camera on to the night setting & snapped pictures all around the yard.

This is our front yard with the street light on.


A gorgeous snow-covered tree

Tom's truck had been parked right where this limb fell.

I made tons of pictures and I won't bore you with too many of them. I was so excited to see how the pictures turned out so I came inside to download the pictures. I had just begun when, you guessed it, the power went out. Jeepers. Just as I had predicted. It was about 8:30, I think. I called my friend Nancy who lives in this neighborhood. She never loses power. She said to come on over to her warm and well-lit house. Tom & I were packing a few things when Nancy said that her power had just gone. Hmmmmm. I called Abby and she had power. So, Tom & I plus Nancy (whose husband was out of town at the time) went to Abby & Matt's house. The drive over was so beautiful. Not many cars on the road and snow everywhere. We had about 5 inches of snow. Around here, that's monumental! After being at Ab's for a while, Tom said he was going back home to sleep since he would be the only one in the house that had to work on Monday. (Matt's work was cancelled.) So Tom left to sleep in a cold house. He said he was fine until he woke and his head was cold. My Tom doesn't have much hair on his head so he grabbed a stocking cap and slept like a baby til morning. When he woke, it was 53 degrees inside. He joked that, since I keep the thermostat so low, it wasn't a big adjustment for him. Ha ha, Tom. We had a blast at Abby's. Here are some pictures.

Cady looks like she's eating her bib.

She's getting dressed to go outside on Monday morning.

Matt & Abby made a snow family. The lady really had boobs!

Cady's baby snow person had a bib & pacifier.

Power was not restored at my house until about 5pm on Monday. I had planned on having everyone over for dinner b/c Andrea's mom was flying back to Canada on Tuesday. We changed our plan and met at Copper River Grille. The only ones able to come were Mark, Andrea, Brie, Andrea's mom Brenda, Tom & I and our other "relative" Nancy. It was very crowded. I suppose other people were without power and they were in no hurry to leave their tables.

Brie was in a great mood last night. The waitress fell in love with her.

When I returned home, guess what was the first thing I saw? Those stinking chicken & dumplins'!! (heavy on dump). We quickly dumped them in the garbage.

Finally, this afternoon I came to the computer to try to load pictures. My computer would not come on. After trying several times, I called our I.T. guy, son-in-law Matt. He told me several steps to take but nothing was working. Didn't really want to buy a new computer right now. Economic times are hard. Unnecessary expenditures are forbidden. But, in my humble opinion, my computer is a complete necessity! Luckily, the computer finally rebooted. And it's working ok for now, though quite slow. If it breaks down, I'm sending the bill to Duke Power. We need underground utilities. All they need to do is look at the log of how many times we've been without power and they'd realize something must be done. Anybody with me on this????