Winter in WV

Aiden and Granny meet for the first time, November 2008

As I mentioned in a previous post, we went to West Virginia last week for Ryan's Granny's funeral and to be with family. And we got snowed in. I posted pictures of the tree that nearly fell on the house. I have some other pictures from the trip in the album below. Since we were stuck with nowhere to go for a few extra days (from Tuesday evening until Sunday morning, we were able to get out once, and that was for the funeral - it was almost like the weather cooperated just so we could make that and then kept us in again!), we thought we should at least take advantage of the snow and have some fun in it. Camden had a blast! We recently had a little snow at home in North Carolina, but this was so much more. And there was a great hill. And a real sled.

The hill is actually part of why we couldn't leave... It was solid ice under the snow. And we weren't about to try to carry all of our luggage down that hill. And then drive down the street that was also covered in ice (under all the snow). Especially with our two boys with us. Not worth the risk. But Camden had no problem sledding on the hill.

Winter in WV

The funeral was on Thursday, put off a little b/c of the weather. It was a beautiful service. Granny looked wonderful and young. And peaceful. Ryan's sister, Rachel, flew in from Hawaii. It was nice to have time to spend with her, too. And she had no problem being stuck in the house with Aiden! ;) This was actually the first time I had been around Rachel more than for a short visit (and that's only happened twice since they live so far away). I joked to Ryan that now I know why he married me - he missed his sister being around. We are different in a lot of ways, but I was surprised at how similar we think about so many things!

We had planned on seeing Ryan's dad and stepmom some, but the weather prevented that from happening, too. We were just a few miles from each other but couldn't make it. We finally got to see Gary on our way home Sunday. Susan couldn't make it b/c their heat was out and someone was there at the house working on it. We were sorry we weren't able to see her. They had the unfortunate experience of being snowed in for a while, too, as well as being without power a couple times. Partly b/c of the weather and then later b/c of the plane crash that happened right down the street. You've probably heard about it on the news.

Now, I am sure you have heard about how hard many parts of KY were hit with the big winter storm. We got a lot of that storm while in WV. Our power managed to stay on (though it went out and back on a number of times!) and we were snowed/iced in and we had trees falling all over. Many people in the area were out of power/heat/water/phone service, etc. However, it was worse in much of KY. I know MUCH of my family was out of power for almost the entire week (some still don't have the power back on, and it's been over a week now). It's devastating how bad it is in most of the state. Please send out prayers that things are resolved as soon as at all possible. Unfortunately, it's nothing to take lightly.