Piste & powerless at Nutters Grove

(There was a very cool pic here of the snow coming down at dawn, but I hit the wrong button, deleted it, and now Blogger for some stupid reason won't let me reload it. Arrrrghghh!)

Two days without power due to the "weather bomb" which hit Canterbury this week. I'm not fooled by the 80's sounding terminology (the decade of buzzphrases that meant exactly nothing). A "weather bomb" is merely code for "Oops.. we didn't forecast this!"

As usual, we lost electricity. This time for just shy of two days. Mooney the Looney (crazy dude next door, you will recall) kept ringing up all and sundry threatening to top himself if the power wasn't restored. Apparently one of the recipients was the (and I quote) "Chief of Police", which to my way of thinking means he was asking for American help because NZ doesn't have any of these. Every time he rang us to whinge, I kept reminding him "this is what you get in the country" in the vain hope it might convince him to move. Yeah, well.. we live in hope ;-)


Thank goodness for log fires! At least we could keep warm & cook food & sterilise bottles. The animals are none too impressed, but we scored some hay from a neighbour (traded for our gas heater as their logfire is out of action) and that kept the hooved critters fed when they couldn't get to the grass.

Heaviest dump we've seen thus far. A foot in some places, and despite glorious sunshine yesterday, we still have 6-8 inches around the house. My niece in Oxford said she got 10 inches but I told her to stop talking about her husband like that ;-)

The mini-thaw yesterday froze overnight in seriously subzero temps (my friends in Canada will find this funny in comparison to what they routinely experience!) and now everything is hard, slick and damn dangerous. Good thing we snuck out yesterday before lunch and made it to the store, because I would not be brave enough to drive anywhere today.

Anyhoo, enjoy the pix :-) Oh and something else they didn't teach us in antenatal class (grin!). When giving the baby his first rusk, first strip baby naked and place in upturned umbrella. Anything else (like in a favourite stand-up toy, for example) means you will be cleaning til the cows come home ;-)

Note how we put one foot in front now, when we try to crawl. Usually the same foot, but not always.

Watching TV on Dad's knee.