Changing the face of home.

We had quite a storm in Salem in the wee early morning hours of April 2nd (General Conference weekend).  I woke about 4:00 am to the sound of a periodic "beep" coming from our smoke alarm.  Rob and Kristy were spending the night and I didn't want it to wake them or the boys; and when one alarm sounds, often the alarms on the other floors go off.  I went into the hall to see if I could see what was happening and realized that the power was out.  I looked outside and noticed we were in a wintery blizzard.  There was about a foot of snow on top of my lamp posts.  The beeping noise was because of a back-up battery that was dead or dying.  Of course I woke up Ken to help.  ;-)  But he went back to bed.  I decided to put a new battery in the alarm, but when I took it off the wall we had a full scale LOUD fire alarm hollering "Fire!  Fire! (pause) Fire! Fire!" all through the house.  I  hurriedly put the alarm back on the wall, taped over the speaker part and wrapped it in a towel to deaden the noise.  Then I got my ear plugs out and went back to bed---ignoring the beeps. It's amazing that the boys slept through that!

In the morning the power was still out and Salem was covered in a HEAVY blanket of snow.  (I can't believe that we didn't take any pictures!)  We had one tree on the west side of our home that was down completely at the roots.  Then we had so many broken branches in the two trees on each front corner of our house that Ken had to cut them way down.  :-(  We're hoping they grow again.  Looks kind of barren, huh?  LeAnn asked Ken if we were going to leave those trees like that.  Yes, we are.  I have hope that they will sprout and grow again.  I miss those beautiful pink blossoms that SHOULD be there this time of year.

This storm changed the face of Salem.  There were SO many trees down and damaged that when people got done cleaning up, the streets were full of huge piles of broken trees.  It was the flowering plums, the globe willows and a few pines that took the biggest hit.  They were the ones that had begun to leaf already.

Thanks to a wonderful Salem City crew, the power came back on just in time for Conference.  So we snuggled up by the fire and enjoyed the spirit of conference!  And I think Jeans Stevens gave the very best talk that morning!

I'm still waiting for spring.