The power went out around 7:20am on Saturday here in Rockville after there was already close to two feet of snow on the ground.
Two neighbors and I shoveled out all the walks for the six houses in our row of townhomes. This provided Sookie a nice labyrinth to run through but also access between each neighbors home.
We took advantage of that by visiting the one neighbor who had a Coleman cooking stove. He invited us over for coffee and a small party formed at his place. Following another round of shoveling and dog walking, everyone reconvened at our place since we were all set up to host a party.
No one who came by seemed too concerned about the lack of heat or impending darkness, but none of these neighbors have small children. One couple, a few homes over do have a newborn in the house and for them this was a totally different day.
That neighbor was the first one out shoveling. He spent the day not only shoveling out the walk and the SUV but also the road too in hopes to get out of the neighborhood. They were either ill-prepared or adamantly opposed (or probably both) to having the new baby having to spend the night in the dark cold house. There was no sign of power returning before nightfall.
At one point we came together as a community, all working together with shovels and manpower to push out his SUV when he drifted into a snow bank only a few feet from the tire tracks that he could drive on to get out to the main road to get to somewhere with heat and power.
That really put things in perspective for me.
- We need to add camping equipment to our baby registry so we can still have hot water even during a blackout and
- That a fun adventure and a scary predicament are only separated by the condition of the people depending on you.
Fortunately for the Robleto family, baby is still the womb, Selena is healthy and Sookie loves the snow. So we were fine. After everyone left our little open house, Selena and I played the board games Agricola and Killer Bunnies by candlelight. Finally, about 15 hours later, when we were getting ready for bed, the power came back on.
Here are some photos from the Snowpacalypse:
Two feet of snow on the back porch

Neighbors (and Mr. A) weathering the storm at our place


On our wedding day, we had cupcakes for the guests and a small 6″ topper cake for the traditional cake cutting. When it came time to cut the cake, the knife wouldn’t go down. At first we thought it was a joke. We tried two different knives, we sawed at it, I had turned the knife over at one point and applied a stabbing motion to the cake. All to no avail. Our friends and family looked on, even after we fed each other cupcakes on the cuff instead, until I finally had to shoo them away. Apparently, it was frozen solid, since we had gotten the cake earlier.

