{Weekend Recap} Ice, Ice, Baby

It's cold outside. And not just "Texas cold." It's actually been below freezing for at least 48 hours now. It sleeted for a solid day and night on Friday and by Saturday morning tons of broken tree branches littered the lawns and streets, cracking under the weight of the ice. Even the tops of the stately trees in our front yard are bowing under the pressure. Over 200,000 homes in the DFW metroplex have been without power for at least a day or more, and gratefully we are not one of them. I was pretty paranoid about it with four babies to keep warm that are on the mend from colds, to boot. We have relished every second of our warm house, movies galore and a fridge full of food!

our icy abode!

our two labs, jersey and shiner, taking a break from pouncing around in the ice!

The madness started Thursday evening. Apparently everyone misunderstood we were only approaching a freezing weekend of ice and instead thought the world was ending. I wanted to get out of the house for just a minute when the husband came home from work, so I ran to the store to grab some bread. There was only six loaves of bread left on the shelves, all the water was gone and there was barely room to squeeze through the aisles of the store! To top it off, the lines for every single register were at least 15 people deep. It was insane! I guess that's what happens when people all go to the store at the same time. It reminded me of when we lived in Houston and the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, which was actually much worse. You could barely even find a gas station that was in-service or not out of gas and there was plenty of damage to homes and buildings everywhere...

Anyway, I was in an even worse mood when I got back but having the husband safe and sound working from home the next day helped things. I took the day off from my work since he was busy and my nanny was certainly not expected to brave the ice to our house! We watched Baby Einstein movies, took extra long naps, ate lots of food and had a cozy dinner of spaghetti squash and marinara meat sauce (which simmered on the stove for hours prior to dinner and was delicious!) followed by hot baths in the tub and warm fleece PJs for bed. We had the best evening with our babies! They splashed in the bath and got both the husband and I soaked and were cracking up laughing the whole time. It was hilarious. :)

After they went down for bed, the husband and I holed up in our room to watch movies, drink wine and work on a few projects. We have mountains of laundry to fold, I have Christmas cards to address, a desk to organize and clean up (we recently moved my little office space upstairs to our room) and a few boxes left to unpack up there. But despite the mess, it was so nice and warm in the master and I had candles lit and it smelled good...something about it just made it so cozy (how many times can I use that word in this post!?) and we really relaxed and enjoyed our evening. So much that we'll be doing the same thing tonight!

This afternoon I attempted to get out on the roads for an errand and we both figured once I got out of the neighborhood the roads would be fine (without the kids, of course, who remained safely indoors!). The main roads were fine, but turned out our neighborhood is still so iced over I slid down the last half of our driveway and couldn't manage to get the suburban turned on the ice and pointed in the right direction on the street. Plus we have too many hills around our area so it was impossible to get past them on such slick ice. It took us over an hour and loads of buckets of hot water to inch the suburban back into the driveway! We would've left it parked on the street but folks were attempting the same thing and sliding around the curve near our house. A heavy iced-over tree branch was also hanging down in the middle of the street and people were attempting to dodge it in their vehicles, making the suburban a prime target for coasting cars. One car came down a nearby sloping street and couldn't slow down at the bottom and cruised right into our neighbor's front yard! The car came to a stop right after it's front tires went over the curb and they were able to quickly back out, but it was a close call nonetheless. Our cars will remain parked until more of the ice melts!

After getting the 'burb back in the driveway, we retreated inside to warm up and made ourselves Crown and Cokes and watched some TV until the babies woke up from their naps. Then we spent time playing upstairs and helped the quads decorate mini Christmas trees for their rooms. They loved it and were so cute playing with the ornaments!

We've had hot breakfasts in the morning and turned the quad table so the babies could see the "snow" outside while they ate...

...and we've read a few extra books in the evening before bedtime. My heart swells when all four kids clamor for a spot in my lap, which is really just my leg span these days. It's the only way I can make room for them all!

Whelp, the husband has just finished mounting our bedroom TV onto the wall and I'm pretty excited about it. We moved it upstairs since we upgraded the living room TV to a new 55-inch screen—a Black Friday Christmas gift to ourselves this year! I also realize that I have on no makeup in any of the photos of myself included in this post, so that's enough naked-face pictures for today! And the timer for dinner is going off, which marks the start our evening. (It's the third time in a week I've made this roasted zucchini.) Plus, even though this is a Weekend Recap post, we've still got one more day of weekend left!

But before I go, here's the cuuuuuutest little video of Logan saying "ho ho ho!"

Hope you and yours are staying warm!

PS - Up next, my DIY fabric strip banner post!