The Salt City/Changing tradition

I went to the "Salt City" today and haven't been there since after Thanksgiving. Since that time the "city" endured a powerful ice storm. I had heard that many people were without power for quite a long time.

I went to my old neighborhood and couldn't believe all the limbs that were down. Someone said that it looked like a war zone. It looked like a tornado had been through that area as well. Every lawn in that neighborhood had major limbs down! At my parents' house the two trees in front looked so bad! The folks had had these trees for 51 years! Big huge limbs hung down from the trees. Then in the back yard, two major limbs blocked the entrance for my parent to go into the garage. Also that brought the electric line from the house to the garage down. It was a mess in the backyard futher down the yard. My parent one of those old black gas lights (that was popular in the 60's) and it was crushed!

It was sad to see all of the destruction caused by the ice storm. We had the same problem in this town 3 years back but I don't remember it being THAT bad.

Thankfully my parent will receive some assistance in getting the limbs cleared away. What a mess!
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This year we are doing something different. We are having Christmas Eve dinner or lunch. Because of L's schedule and our own, we decided to eat a day early and take my parent back on Christmas. We had no other way to do it. So now I have confused everyone. I thought I had told the inlaws that we would have dinner on Christmas Eve and they thought it was going to be on "Blizzard Saturday." Then there was a question on when we would do the gift exchange. Well, I said we would do that the same, but just have the dinner a day earlier. I'm not sure if this will go over too big with everyone. I told them if we would need something to add to the dinner then at least the stores would be open to get it. We probably wouldn't have to do this next year as Christmas will be on a Thursday. I think this is a one time deal only. And my family will be thankful for knowing that bit of trivia. :)