How to have Christmas Day (without power)

Well - this will be one Christmas Day for the memory book! We had 18" of snow and no power! The day started off fairly well with a warm house, lights and a refrigerator full of food, and family coming at 10:30 AM for brunch.

Then... the power went off around 6:30 AM...

It's a good thing we have a gas fireplace, gas stove and gas water heater! We used them all to make a very nice brunch, a nice warm-ish house and we were even able to clean up the dishes!

Then... we had more family coming for dinner... and we even made dinner and had a wonderful time without the power. We made a seafood chowder that was wonderful and everyone was loving it (good think we didn't plan on cooking something in the oven!). We got power back around 8:30 PM, after everyone had left since it was dark in our house even with lots of candles. It stayed on until morning, then was off again until around noon. We stored our food in the refrigerator out in the snow, which worked well.

We will be looking into getting a generator, though. We just lose power around here too much!

Here's to NOT having a white Christmas next year!