Southport Sunset via The Entertaining House

We listened attentively. We were warned. We paid attention and did as we were told. A storm was headed our way. It was so big and all-encompassing that it would affect the majority of the eastern seaboard. The Europeans had it on their radar as did we. Aerial views of massive, swirling storm clouds seemed menacing from up in space. This could possibly be the storm of the century. So we braced ourselves and prepared. We bought milk and eggs and bread, red wine and chocolate, jars of peanut butter, loaves of bread and gallons of water. Our pantries were stock, ready for the wild weather headed our way. The massive supermarkets were all bare.

We stocked up on candles and lanterns and flashlights. Replaced batteries and bought new ones. We filled pitchers of water, stacked up board games, books and magazines. Some bought shovels, others picked up generators and buckets of salt.

The night before the storm I do as I always do when there's a potential power loss. I made a pot of coffee. It might be cold in the morning, but iced coffee is better than no coffee. We have no generator and our heat is oil not gas so we'd have no working ranges or ovens to use. I made sure we were all showered as we could potentially be without power a few days, and well, teenagers get rank fast! I also did a quick vacuum - I hate a dirty home. And I did the laundry. We would need all the clean warm clothes we could get our hands on. My small home is as airtight as a sieve and when the heat goes it gets cold pretty quickly. Before bed, instead of turning the heat down as I ordinarily do, I pushed it up a bit. We were ready, as ready as we could possibly be.

I settled onto the couch and saw that the winds were howling. I braced myself for the long night ahead, certain that I would wake up in a cold, dark house in the morning. I became mesmerized with the wind outside from my spot on the couch and took a quick 15 second video of the snow whipping around in the howling winds. (Click here to see it on Instagram.)

I was so relieved to wake up to a warm home with our power in tact. I got up and looked outside. There was a fair amount of snow but nothing earth shattering, certainly not record breaking. (Click here to see my short video capture on Instagram.) I wouldn't label it the storm of the century either. What we had was actually perfection. Enough snow to blanket everything around us. Enough snow to warrant a snow day for the children, but not so much that we could not dig out from it and not so much that it weighed heavily on the trees and power lines causing them break and fall. We fared quite well. Our neighbors to our south saw virtually no snow, and our neighbors in upstate Connecticut and Rhode Island and Massachusetts were hit quite hard.

As the day drew to a close my daughter noticed the most magnificent sunset and called to me. I grabbed my camera and went outside. Sunsets are magnificent as it is, but when they reflect the colors of a crisp fallen snow that's almost blue in tone as the skies start to darken, they become truly magical. There was a peaceful calm in the air last night. We are due to get more snow, perhaps a significant amount on the night of the Super Bowl. We're already prepared. We may need to run out for some more milk and wine. But other than that, we're ready!

Juno, After the Storm via The Entertaining House — Juno, After the Storm via The Entertaining House

Juno :: The Blizzard of '15