Last night, Christi and I were joking about how these big winter weather warnings never happen. We figured that we would have no ice whatsoever when we woke up in the morning.

As everyone in the southeastern part of Nebraska figured out, the meteorologists deserved their paychecks this week. Stan woke me up around 4.00 a.m. to go outside, and every single blade of grass was frozen solid. The worst news was that we lost the top to one of our pine trees.

Christi joked that just two weeks in as homeowners, and we can't even keep our trees alive outside. Hopefully we do a little better with Stan.