What were YOU doing at Midnight?

To answer the question above, I would like to say that we were all sleeping soundly in our beds. That, however, was not entirely the case at our house last night. Fortunately, our kids were all sleeping soundly, warmly tucked in their beds. Unfrotunately, Bob & I were outside freezing our faces off.

Bob had been putting up Christmas lights on that lovely Monday evening...and it really had been a lovely evening....not too cold, and barely a breeze. As I have eluded to in other blogs, Bob is doing a fantastic job with the lights this year. One of the tools that has made this easier for him is his new 2-story stepladder. This thing is huge! He can make it to the top of each tree, and because it has rungs on both sides, it is easy to access eith side of the tree, and it is relatively stable. He has only needed my help to move it from tree to tree due to it's large size.

Last night, Bob finished working for the night at about 10pm, and left the ladder up between our house and the neighbor's house as he has done evry night since November 1. Out of nowhere, we got one of the worst wind storms this year. The wind was whipping around the house at around 50 MPH...not only were the windows rattling, but our entire bedroom that hangs slightly over the rest of the house, was shaking...it felt like it was going to blow right off the house! Added to that, there was this very odd banging/slamming noise on the outside of the bedroom wall. What could it be? We were up 2 stories!

It's the ladder! Blast...that thing is so heavy...and so UNSTABLE being way-too-tall against gale force winds. The wind chill had dropped from a balmy 26 degrees to below zero, and the wind was unbelievable. The bungy cords Bob had used to try to tack the ladder to the tree were pulling from the house and branches as if made from rubber bands. As the ladder leaned perilously toward our neighbors' front picture window, the cords would snap it back, causing it to crash against the side of our house. Nothing was good about this situation.

Using basically all the strength we had in us, we cut the cords and somehow mangaed to move this monstrosity baby steps at a time from around the side of the house. We needed to make it all the way to our front yard, the only space large enough to knock it over into without ruining trees or personal property. As our faces went numb in the cold, we somehow managed to carry this thing to the desired location without ripping off our roof along the way. With a very loud crash(which was actually unnoticed in the crazy noise of the wind), the ladder hit the ground, clearing all items in our yard...success. Well, good-night, honey...sleep tight...it's after midnight!!!