The last weekend in September was a really busy one for me. The company I work for was holding this HUGE fundraiser where they auctioned off a Tom Brady signed foot ball, a gold panning trip, a Cal Ripken signed baseball, and a Ben Afflek signed Argo poster (the costume designer for the film lives in Deadwood). The most important object though was a 7.34 Troy ounce gold nugget. It was a copy of the biggest nugget found in the black hills by Potato Creek Johnny. The proceeds from the auction were to go to our museum, a clock shop in Rapid City, and the Wounded Warrior Project. Michael Martin Murphey came and sang!
My girls got all dressed up!!!
And I got to wear this awesome hat!!!
The nugget ended up going for $40,000! We were super happy. And now on to the snow!!!!
So on October 4th (literally the I've been in SD for a month mark) the weathermen in the area predicted snow. They said we were going to get between 12"-15". Which for Deadwood is totally doable and you can still pretty much function without much of a problem. So when I went to sleep on October 4th at 10:30 PM this is what it looked like.
But I braved the weather. Looking like an Eskimo!!
I went outside and dug myself out of the snow. Finally that day the power came on after a 36 hr outage. I have never been so happy for heat!!! Funny thing is the next day I went out and cleared my driveway in a T-shirt and leggings since it was 60°!!! South Dakota Problems!
(Sorry honey!)
Most importantly though...
Just a little bit right? Couldn't really do any harm right? WRONG!!! I woke up to no power no heat and this!
I can no longer see my front lawn or the road really and as you can kind of see it was still coming down. I also started using the snow as a fridge since mine clearly didn't work!
By the time I went to sleep that night it looked like this.
No more porch for Ellyn! It's covered in 2 feet of snow!!! Mind you I took this when the power came on for 20 min that night at about 9 pm and then it promptly cut out again.
When I awoke the next morning (still without power) it had finally stopped snowing but it was bitter cold and the wind was blowing like crazy. Because we had had 65+ mph wind throughout the snow TONS of trees were down and I have never seen snow drifts this high since the NJ blizzard of 1996. This is what my back door looked like!
Now finally and the most important news to share is about when my boyfriend Anthony and his parents arrived. We did all the touristy things. Went to Mt Rushmore, saw the buffalo, and Crazy Horse. I dressed him up as a rodeo clown :D!
We went to the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs which was awesome!!!
WE GOT ENGAGED!!!! Anthony put over 400 love notes up on the walls in my house and when I came home from work was playing our song (Can't help falling in love by Elvis) and had the ring in a red rose before getting down on one knee!!! :D
We even got the first things for our wedding.
So like I said, it's been a busy couple of months :D Ta Ta for now!
about time!
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