Snowpocalyse

 In mid February we started seeing news stories about a cold front that was going to come our way. We were super excited because a couple of years ago, Joe built a snow machine and he was going to be able to test it out and make snow.  The night came and the temperature dropped.  Once it got pretty cold, the power went out.  And then the power didn't come back on.  It was out for about 2 days.  The temperature dropped to about 10 degrees.  Luckily, we could turn on a generator that would give us power so that our gas heater would run.  We had to be very careful though because the pipes in our houses are not designed for temperatures at that level and so we had to make sure they didn't freeze. 

Many houses in our neighborhood didn't have any power.  We ended up hosting a cajun shrimp boil for some of our friends who didn't have heat in their houses so that they could come and warm up.  Several of them stayed and spent the night. We had 3 adults, 7 children, and several snakes that spent the night that night.  After the power came back on and the air began to warm, then the frozen pipes really started to show.  Almost every house on our street had a broken pipe.  We just had one outdoor faucet that broke, but a couple of our rental houses had broken pipes in walls.  We were out of school for a week because of it.  Here are some pictures of our house in the snow.  The first one is the snow machine working.