Saturday was absolutely crazy. We heard that Connecticut was expecting 8-12 inches of snow in October(!) and at first Christi and I thought it would be cool to have some snow this early. Then we learned a very important lesson about how things work: Leaves need to fall off trees before snow can fall.

Our once mighty oak in the front yard had all of its branches just bending over and swooping to the ground. Then it happened, they started cracking under the weight of the heavy snow and crashing to the ground.

When the first one fell and the snow was still coming down pretty thick, we decided to go out and take a picture with it. At the time, we were laughing because a hurricane blew through two months earlier and all we lost was branch one third of the size. We really didn't know what to expect moving forward.

After our friends canceled their Halloween party Saturday night, we kept watching more and more huge branches crash to the ground. Then we noticed that a few huge branches were starting to hang right above our power line (as well as cable and and telephone lines). As we saw the branch cracking in half, we just were under the assumption that we were going to have to do deal with the fact that it was going to rip down all three lines and we would be without power for at least a week until they could hook them back up.

After it started getting dark (maybe it seemed darker since we lost power around 5pm), we heard a huge thud in the front yard. The cable line was stripped to the ground, via our siding, and the telephone line was snapped off (no huge deal as we don't have a landline).

So, we were thankful that the power line was still in tact and we had the hope that if power was restored we could at least get it. Even at the expense of the limb catching on fire at the same time. Then ... we heard another large crack. We go out and find a massive limb teetering on our power line. No way for it to fall because of how it broke off and how it was hanging.

At this point, it's getting dark and cold since we haven't had power for the past five hours or so. Christi and I decided to keep the fire going that we started during the Nebraska game and sleep in the living room for the night since our house is without heat.

Throughout the night, you could hear trees and branches snapping from all over the neighborhood and just thumping against the ground when they eventually fell over. Every time we heard this, we'd sprint to the front window to make sure it wasn't one of ours and that our power line was still barely holding on.

Around 3am, we were both awoken to a massive crashing sound. Like before, we sprint up to the window and the front yard looks exactly the same. We just figured it was someone else's yard as we couldn't see anything.

Then Stan needed to go out around 4.30am and Christi very nicely offered to wake up and take him out. Then I get woken up to her saying, "So ... there's a massive tree in our backyard." It was so dark that it looked like one of the pine trees from our neighbors yard behind us fell over and crashed into our yard. Luckily, it missed the house and the garage and we said we would just try to get some more sleep and assess the damage in the morning.

When the sun came out, we were able to see that it was our tree laying in our backyard. We absolutely love this tree (check out those awesome highlighter colors!) and it basically snapped in half.

Sunday was basically a clean up day. We still have some wires hanging in the street and are currently going on day three without power.

Unfortunate timing as today is Halloween. The Governor didn't want to get ostracized from Connecticut, so he said that he wasn't going to officially cancel Halloween, but that everyone could go out at their own risk. Now who's going to send they kids out with live power lines down in everyone's yards?

I tell you what. If you are coming down Rumford trick-or-treating tonight, we're handing out extra candy to those dressed up as CL&P workers, lumberjacks, clean up crews, etc.

Photos are up.