We had a nasty storm move in Friday night, and it dumped over a foot of snow along with lots of rain. The snow was the heavy wet variety, so it made trees bend and break under the weight, and somewhere out in the woods were power lines that brought power to our house, and they were broken.

It happened around 2:30 in the morning. I know this because I was up at 2 a.m. shoveling my driveway. I never shovel my driveway especially at 2 a.m.

Why was I shoveling? Because I am the mother of three girls.

Seriously.

A boy had stopped by to visit the middle daughter. When he arrived, our driveway was plowed. The cement slab in front of our garage was all shoveled off, and there was no snow anywhere near our front door.

That quickly changed.

My husband and I had left and came back. During the time we were gone, about six inches of heavy snow fell. Almost no one was out on the roads. I told the boy where to find the broom to sweep the snow off his car, and we went to bed.

A couple of hours later, I woke up to the sounds of a car trying to get unstuck. I realized it must be the boy trying to leave.

I got dressed and went out to my living room to find my daughter on the couch. I thought she’d be helping him. She said he hadn’t come in to ask for help. I made her put on boots and gloves and a coat and go out and help.

On our way out the door, I grabbed a shovel. My daughter followed me, but she couldn’t find gloves or a shovel. She didn’t look very hard.

The boy was shoveling in front of his car, giving himself a path to the road. I started shoveling too.

After a bit, I asked out loud if the road was even plowed. When we had arrived home a few hours earlier, our road was full of deep snow, and I was pushing the snow with the bottom of my car.

We quickly determined the road was NOT plowed, and even if we shoveled to the end of my driveway, I wasn’t prepared to shovel a mile of road to get to the main road. The boy had no choice but to sleep on our couch.

As we went back in, the lights started to flicker. They would go out and come back on about six times. We quickly went around and unplugged all of the electronics. The lights then went out completely.

Luckily, we have a generator that will power everything in our house except for the hot water heater.

This is what our road looked like:

Our road the next morning -- it wasn't plowed until after 11 a.m.

And this is what the snow was doing to trees (these trees normally stand straight and were nearly bent in half):

The snow was bending and breaking trees. These trees normally stand straight.

The boy waited until our road was plowed before leaving the next day. Even then, he said his car was pushing snow because it wasn’t plowed well.

We didn’t have any problems getting around because we own a truck, which has a lot more clearance than a car. This is a good thing.