The big deal event in February was a huge ice storm that rolled through our part of Texas. Even after the big snow and ice event in February 2021 that essentially shut down the whole state, I still tend to roll my eyes when the dire news stories predicting winter weather  come up. Call it twenty-some years of local experience. Given this, we had a good chuckle when the kids had a snow day on January 31st for a storm that had been predicted.

As I recall, they spent the day playing, often outside, because there was no “weather” to be had. Ha, ha, ha – silly Texas. That was Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, the joke was over. We woke up to no power and crashing noises coming from outside. A beautiful, glistening layer of ice had coated all the vegetation and the vehicles. The trees had already been stressed by the severe drought all through this past year; the branches snapped under the weight of the ice. The kids absolutely begged to play outside so they could examine the ice, but of course we wouldn’t let them, instead pointing out the crashing noises and showing them when fresh limbs had fallen.

At one point, in our neighbor’s yard, an entire tree fell over. Sean was estimating it was maybe 40-feet tall, and it just crashed under the weight of the ice, root ball pulled up from the ground. Thankfully it fell toward the street, and not toward the houses. It did however attempt to take out a couple of crape myrtles out of the row of them that provides erosion control and some division between the neighbor’s yard and ours. We’re predicting that they’ll survive.

We spent the day consuming food that either required no real preparation or that could be heated up on the camp stove out in the garage. We made sure we had collected up our flashlights and lanterns for the evening, and that sleeping bags were deployed throughout the house for extra warmth. It wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been a couple years ago – maybe 30 degrees F, give or take – but it still got cold in the house.

One of the highlights of the day was discovering that an absolute flock of cedar waxwings had descended on our icy holly tree, plucking away at its frozen red berries. They are such beautiful birds. Sean tried to sneak out and capture a photograph for Maya the bird-lover, but the birds didn’t make it easy. Regardless, Maya and I stood at the window and watched them for several minutes. She rushed to write notes about it in her Bird Nerd journal.

On Thursday, we again woke to no power and more crashing sounds. I can’t remember exactly when all the waves of ice and sleet occurred, but the weight on the trees just kept growing and growing. It was both miserable and fascinating to watch as upright trees just kept bending lower and lower. I do not love crape myrtles – they’re pretty but over-planted in our part of the world – but we have a huge one in the back yard that has grown so large that it had become interesting. The silly thing is probably 25-30 feet tall, and its limbs bent all the way over to the ground, many of them breaking off, much to my disappointment.

The surface roads didn’t seem icy, so we cleared fallen branches from the driveway and Sean carefully wormed his way out between the bent over trees. The goal was to head to Home Depot to see if there were any chainsaws. Clearly we were going to need one. Of course, there were no chainsaws – as is usual, other folks were a bit faster on the uptake than us. But, on his way home, Sean bought hot chicken biscuits and hot coffee. It was amazing! Warm food that hadn’t been cooked in the garage – I’ll take it!

There wasn’t a whole lot to do, so we spent some time sorting through the contents of  old boxes – some of which possibly hadn’t been looked at since we moved into this house in 2005. The kids kept each other occupied – we wouldn’t let them have their devices till it got dark and we wouldn’t let them outside except on the front porch, so it was maybe a little boring for them.

Somewhere along the line, I was milling around by the back windows just at the right moment to see our neighbor’s very tall, very unhealthy cedar tree crash down and take out a couple sections of our fence. The fence needed replacing anyway, and now I don’t have to worry that their sick tree will fall on any new fence we have put in, but I don’t love having our hand forced. At this time, the fence remains un-replaced, but it’ll need to be dealt with soon.

Later in the day, the temperature had warmed a bit and chunks of ice started falling from the trees, like slow-motion hail. It was weird.

That evening, we cautiously drove out to visit our friends and the warmth and light of their powered house. It felt incredibly odd and a bit dangerous to drive around the suburbs and highways of a largish city when sections of street lights and traffic lights are out and there are piles of limbs and / or bent over trees looming about.

Hanging out with our friends was such a wonderful diversion. They let us charge devices and the kids all played together for a little while. We ate dinner and had drinks and chit-chatted as if the city weren’t in a shambles. It was a welcome break in what had become, after only two days, a tedious pattern of cold and dark and destruction.

The difficulty with these things is not having any idea how long you’ll have to manage. When we originally went dark, the power company thought they might have things restored by sometime Friday. Yuck, but we can deal with that. Somewhere along the line, as more trees and limbs fell on power lines, and the clean-up effort grew and grew, the update from the power company became something akin to: this is bigger than we realized – we’re trying our best.

On Friday – my birthday – limbs were still coming down. If I remember correctly, there had been another wave of ice accumulation overnight. We had one poor tree in the front yard that basically lost all of its limbs – now it’s mostly just trunk and hope. We’ll see what comes of it. Later in the day, as things started to thaw, still more limbs began falling – maybe the ice had been keeping them in place.

In sunnier days, I had made myself a dinner reservation for that evening. Generally speaking, I no longer choose places that I specifically want to try out. I instead select places that will result in a minimum amount of grumbling from the kids. It turns out, I’ll choose a no-drama meal over one prepared by a much-loved chef or a novel new restaurant. The meal was, in fact, pleasantly devoid of drama. The food was nice enough. There was a bit of live music. And they had light and heat, which we didn’t yet have at home.

It was a bit sad to again come home to a cold dark house, but on our way, we saw crews out working in our neighborhood in the pitch dark trying to get power restored. I can’t imagine how difficult their jobs were. We settled into our covers and the kids messed with their devices for a while. We had just sent them to bed, I think, when the power came back on! This was around 10:20p, and other than a flicker here and there, it stayed on!

I later learned that while we might envy those that never lost power and didn’t have to hang out in the dark and didn’t have to throw out spoiled food and run around town to keep devices charged, we were luckier than many. Some people were without power for as much as 10-12 days, with slow restorations happening throughout that period. There’s been a big kerfuffle with many of the city’s residents and elected officials decrying the poor management and poor communication during this particular crisis. Maybe that’s true, but I can also say, in 23-24 years of living here, we’ve never seen ice destruction like this – not even close. Whole trees are down – how does vegetation management around power lines account for whole trees falling over? No estimate for when electricity will be restored – I’m not sure how they could do that except case by case, there were so many lines down. I’m not sure there’s a villain here.

They’re calling this event Arborgeddon for the sheer destruction that’s been rained down on these poor trees. I’ve heard it said now multiple times, “It’s tough to be an oak in Texas.” We borrowed a chainsaw and pruning saw from a friend and spent literally all day Sunday dealing with fallen and dangling and broken branches. The kids did an excellent job helping us, and it still took all day, and the entire front of our yard is piled up with stacked limbs. On February 6th, I opened a ticket with the city for brush collection. I read a recent news story that the city hoped to have all the brush picked up by the end of April.

Quite a while ago, Sean had purchased tickets to see the Cirque du Soleil show Corteo when it came through Austin. Thankfully, luckily, the ice was mostly behind us at this point, and we were able to attend the show. The show was, as always, amazing. The music is performed live while you watch, and we had fun pointing that out to the kids. The performers and set pieces are incredible. The kids were particularly taken by Valentina, a small person who floated among the crowd dangling from giant balloons. She bounced through the crowd and people would raise their hands and push her skyward so she could make her way all the way up the auditorium and back down to the stage. Ian was disappointed that he didn’t personally get to help Valentina stay aloft.

Later that day, we threw out our spoiled food and restocked the fridge. We were astonished to find that daffodils, who’s buds had appeared to freeze solid during the storm, were thawed and opening! Amidst all the broken branches and dead plant life, bright yellow blooms glowed.

That Monday, after a very strange week, we all went back to work and school! And then our schedule proceeded to fill up (or more accurately, the kids’ schedules filled up). The week of the 7th, the kids both started once per week after school basketball. The week of the 13th, both kids started their soccer practices for the season – Ian once a week, Maya twice a week. Both kids have signed up for after school music programs – Maya a music memory club, Ian a performance group – these both meet once a week on different days. This is all in addition to the weekly instrument lessons they’ve been doing for years. The weekends will start filling with soccer games for two different kids. It was never our intention to over schedule our lives like this, but somehow it happened anyway.

The weekend before Valentines day, the kids spent time writing out valentines for their classmates and decorating “mailboxes” for the cards. Ian’s featured a cute dog, and Maya’s was, incredibly, an octopus! She will never throw that box away – it will move into her first house with her.

Maya and Ian were also delighted to have received kid-sized, Pokemon-themed fleece blankets – perfect for snuggling up on the couch and playing with iPads.

Through a variety of HEB coupons here and there, we wound up having a couple varieties of dipping chocolate in the cabinet. I had already tried out the new cookie press I received for Christmas and made little heart-shaped butter cookies for us. Then we upped the ante by dipping those little guys in chocolate. We also tried out pretzels and potato chips, all to delightful effect. This worked so well, we went traditional and bought some strawberries and tried those out too.

The kids’ elementary school recently installed a new mosaic mural. The artist they commissioned is Ryah Christensen, and she involved the kids in making the various tiles and things they used to create the piece. Maya made a small fish. I asked Ian what he made and he kind of shrugged and said he worked on some kelp.

Thankfully the mural still features an octopus, but unfortunately, Maya didn’t get to work on that part. There are several hundred kids at school – they can’t possibly all get the part they want – but it’s incredibly neat that they were able to participate in the mural’s creation. That mural is amazing!

We took the kids to the Drafthouse to watch Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania I think the weekend after it came out, and they LOVED it. It was not a great movie, but it was a lot of fun and the kids had full-on belly laughs going more than once.

Toward the end of the month, while Sean and Ian were at a group guitar lesson, Maya and I went and bought some pepper, cucumber, and tomatillo plants for our little container garden in the back yard. Spring has already sprung her in Central Texas – gotta give the plants a fighting chance to establish a good root system before the hell-like summer starts (late April / early May probably). While we were at it, we moved Maya’s cool stone dragon to the outdoors so he could keep an eye on things. With any luck, he’ll scare away the armadillos – unlikely, but it’s fun to imagine anyway.