Happy holidays, indeed.

We went to Ohio on Friday to visit my grandma. The drive takes about 2 hours. But because of icy conditions it took SEVEN HOURS. We were idling down I-75 and Kyle was still struggling to keep control of the car. Cars were spun out everywhere and exit ramps were closed because cars couldn't make it up them. It was so scary and miserable.

BUT, we made it there (later than expected) and were able to spend time with my grandma and catching up with cousins that I haven't seen in a long time. For some of them, it was their first time meeting Jack!

So, last week we drove through the snow storm. Friday we battled the ice. And last night, we dealt with the unruly wind.

I guess we were under a wind advisory, but I hadn't watched the news or anything for a day or two so I didn't realize it. We woke up to power outages and . . . a tree on our house. A tree in our back yard landed on our house and snapped in half. It woke Kyle up and he just thought it was thunder that shook the house. Not so much.


But this could have been much worse. First, Lukeapalooza started yesterday, and we had a lot of men at our house pretty soon after breakfast to help, well, get the tree off of our house. It took less than an hour. Second, there was very little damage to our roof. It will cost us next to nothing to repair the minor damage. Also, the tree snapped after it hit the house. If it had snapped before, it would have landed at an angle that would have made this much more traumatic. Third, we realized that there are a few more trees we need to take down before this happens again. We could have had multiple trees on our house . . . we were fortunate.