What do you get when you mix 1 surgery, 4 airplanes, 1 toddler, 1 ice storm, 2 power outtages, 10-hours in the emergency room, and 16-degree weather?? You get a crazy tired woman desperately glad to be home. My mom had surgery last week, so I flew with the baby to Annapolis, Maryland to help her out. During my first night there, the ice storm hit. We lost power (along with 80,000 other people), and the entire world was encased in an inch of ice.

It was a fantasyland of ice - treacherous but amazing to look at. We saw a power tranformer blow up on the way to the hospital and trees were down everywhere. If there had been heat in the house, I would definitely have enjoyed the spectacle more.

I didn’t have my Nikon DSLR with me as I wanted to travel really light. I was hauling the baby, the car seat, the backpack, the laptop and a suitcase through various airports, so weight became a big issue. My point-and-shoot has gone kaput, so I borrowed my friend, Wendy’s camera. While I did not have the control I wanted, the icy shots turned out alright.

I was wishing for some sunshine to backlight the icy goodness, but alas, the sun came days later. The redish hue of the branches in the second shot up above comes from the flash bouncing off the brown wood. A few minutes after I took this shot on the right, two big branches snapped right off. I got the picture just in time.

On the second night, I watched the most fantastic sunset. It lasted less than a minute because the clouds came speeding back, but those few moments were AMAZING. The sky was fiery red and it backlit the ice branches with ruby sparkles. If only I had my camera! But someday (maybe in my lifetime??), We will have the technology to download images from our brains. That fire and ice sunset will be the first one on my list!