Tim and Daniel checking the sewer vent. It was frozen.
Look at that snow!
Where's the road? It's there going south.
There it is going north.
More snow for Tim to move.
It was a bright sunny New Year's Day.
Lots of frosting on those trees.
I don't think I will be swinging anytime soon.
Those drifts are pretty.
Those are big enough for caves.
I am so glad those storms are over. We had a few problems during them.
Tim left for work on Wednesday with his bag packed as he assumed he wouldn't be able to get back home for awhile. He stays at our son Brandon's house when this happens.
I had been to town on Wednesday and stocked up on supplies and felt I was ready for the storm. Tim had brought us a good stock of wood so we shouldn't have to go to the quonset to get any.
We had our fire going good and went to bed early Thursday night. Around 12:30 our smoke and carbon monoxide detectors were going off. I could smell it. I shut the bedroom door where the children were sleeping.
The smoke was billowing out of the wood stove. Since the wind was coming out of the NNW around 40 mph and we have trees around that side of the house it created a down draft. I felt the chimney. It was stone cold even though the fire inside the stove was burning well. That smoke had to go somewhere.
All our windows are frozen shut so I opened both doors. I did this until 3:30 when the detectors were finally silent.
The stove was burning good. Even though I had turned it up full blast and opened the damper and the door the chimney still wasn't hot. I left the damper open and went back to bed.
At 7:30 the detectors started going off again. By then the stove had burned down and it was cool enough for the furnace to kick in since I had the thermostat set at 65. I suppose the air circulating through the furnace picked up some lingering carbon monoxide. Again I opened both doors and left them open for over an hour.
There wasn't much we could do. We couldn't leave. We would have frozen outside.
This was a problem but I am so thankful we didn't have a fire burn our house down. It would be an awful thing to happen especially during a blizzard.
When the children woke I asked them if they had a headache. Neither one did. I sure did as I was out in that smoke for quite awhile.
Even though the heat isn't as nice as the wood stove I was so happy to have the furnace to use. I let the fire burn out and then cleaned the ashes out of the wood stove. I would make a fire once the wind went down late Saturday.
On Saturday morning the furnace quit working. Oh my...and Tim still is stuck in town. I wasn't sure what to do or what I was looking for but I went downstairs to check it out. It sounded to me like it was the blower had quit since I could hear the furnace make it's sound like it does before it starts to blow the hot air. Then it would shut off before it would do that. It kept doing that so I finally shut it off.
Daniel and I hauled the Eden Pure heater down from the school room so we could keep the living room warm until we could start a fire.
Once they opened the interstate going west of Jamestown Tim decided to try to get home. He made it as far as our first neighbor's to the north almost two miles away. He said the drift going all the way down the hill was hard and four feet deep. He wouldn't have made it through that. So he walked home. It was so good to see him.
Tim checked everything. He thinks the burner isn't igniting in the furnace. We will have to get someone out here once the roads get cleared. Late in the afternoon he got a good fire going and the house is nice and warm now.
It is good to have Tim take care of all these things. He played cards with the children and I just relaxed. He watched a movie with them. He got them ready for bed. It is so nice to have him home.
I think it is going to be hard to see him leave today.
