The Great Ice Storm of 2013

We knew last week on Wednesday that bad, icy weather was coming. It was 82 degrees that day! We took the kids down to our favorite cemetery that day and let them ride their bikes around - it was beautiful! But we were all excited about the cold and the ice! With just a month until we head back to Zambia, we knew chances were not good that we would get some cold weather or snow.

On Thursday night, the kids were in the Brownwood Christmas parade on the Victory Life Academy float for their school. Meanwhile, we were in Temple speaking at an FBC Missions event. Here is Caedmon, ready to brave the cold dressed as Joseph!

Cambree was the "star" :)

Here's the float!! It was like 20 degrees!

Cason was not too impressed... We made it home at midnight after hearing that Brownwood was getting really icy!

We woke up to this on Friday morning. Clearly, we were not prepared, as I halfheartedly scrape at the ice with a butter knife....

Brr... We headed to Paw & B-Maw's (they live about 25 minutes from us out at the lake on the top of a hill) to enjoy the ice with the kids, since school was cancelled!

Let's go sledding down the hill!

Not quite as scary as we thought it would be, although the tube headed straight for a cactus at the bottom of the hill each time!

Here goes Uncle Shade! It was COLD...

I love Andie & Cambree's faces in this pic - so excited!!

We made it back home that night, and the next morning (Saturday) we woke up to NO water in our house - pipes had frozen!! So we load up our laundry, pack a few things, I packed for my Oregon trip, and we head BACK to Paw & B-Maw's. Only we didn't quite make it... This picture was actually at the top of a big hill! We almost made it to the top and then started rolling backwards. It was scary! Shade (a deputy) later said 9 cars were in ditches along that stretch of the road!) We were all ok, although I fell pretty hard getting out of the car and climbing up the hill!

Blu can make anything fun, and he decided to lasso the kids across the ice!

He was EXHAUSTED afterwards!!

But these smiles made it worth it!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Tidwell house! I love my baby tree!

On Sunday church was cancelled, and we had to cancel our Oregon trip as well. We are now back at home, with our pipes unfrozen, saying WE SURVIVED the Great Ice Storm of 2013 :)