Snow on the Coast of NC!!!

We had a rare event at our house....SNOW!! Yep, that is right...the white stuff fell here along the NC coast. The only thing that I didn't like about it, was the fact that it fell at night. The joy of watching it snow is totally lost at night. I don't know how many times I walked to our door and opened it Friday night to watch the snow, then shut the door quickly as not to let the heat out. Our heat is another story. Came home Friday and our gas heater would not light. Called the gas company for a service man to come, only to find out he was off for the day. I can't blame him for wanting a day off, but have a back up person to fill in (no one was coming to fix anything). I explained this was our only source of heat. They were not that sympathetic to my situation. They told us to blow out around the pilot light with an air compressor or compressed air. We tried this, and it didn't work. Their next suggestion was that our thermal coupling had gone out. The service man can come and fix it first thing Monday morning. Uh, no thanks...it is going to snow tonight. I don't have heat tonight. Mark decided that before the snow was going to hit that he would go and buy us a Big Buddy Heater. They are very nice and they run off the cylinders of gas like a propane camp stove. He came back with the heater and 6 bottles of gas. According to the directions, those little bottles wouldn't last too long. We had the oven door open trying to heat the house. Then Mark hooked up the Buddy Heater and instantly we felt heat. We didn't want to go to sleep with any of improvised heat on, so we got up every so often to cut everything back on to warm up. Then Mark decided to try blowing out the wall heater one more time...it worked. Our 5 brick gas heater lit up like a torch and stay on...Thank You Jesus!!! We had heat!!! About 6 am this morning, I was out trying to take some pictures of the snow. I opened all the blinds in the house to see the lovely 5 inches that now blanketed our yard. I could hear the laughter and screams of excited children coming from my cousin Steve's house as his boys ran through the snow making snow angels, snowmen and I think I saw a couple of snowballs whiz by. I just stood on my porch and took pictures. I was suppose to perform at a Valentine's Banquet tonight, but I received a call that they were cancelling; but rescheduling for tomorrow at lunch. Hopefully I can get over there then. We got out today and the roads seem to be clear. The snow is especially beautiful in the pines and cedars around our house in the front. The thing about snow on the coast...it doesn't last long. Already starting to melt and tomorrow it is suppose to be in the 50's here. We have missed the snow every time in Moore County, because we have come home...but this time we got to see some of the fluffy white stuff.

My Valentine's flag!!!

Our front yard that is lined with cedars and pines.

Our back yard!!

This angle is the corner of our back yard. Don't know if you can tell in the picture, but our yard is fenced in. The snow was piled up on the wires of the fence...so pretty.

My bird feeder looks like it is going to break with all that heavy snow on it. You can see the fence in the picture really well, as the snow has piled on the wires.

This is a picture of a massive grape vine that has took over a tree on the side of our yard. It has the black grapes on it. I can never remember their name, but they are good. If you can beat the birds to them.

This picture was taken around 6 am on Feb. 13th. I love the lighting of this picture.