Heat... Sweet Heat

You never know how much you miss something or even use something until it is gone... like losing your electricity... who needs electricity? They didn't use it in the olden days right, so why do we need it? Well, I NEED IT!! Lights, HEAT, TV, computer, cold food in the fridge... yeah I don't get that one, how did people back then keep their food cold? I guess they just had warm milk and butter... gross.

For the short story... we have our power back... keep reading for the more detailed story.

We lost our beloved electricity on Wednesday morning around 6:30am, that night we didn't sleep so well as we listened to the trees cracking, snapping and falling in our back yard. With all the noise that I heard all night I thought that every tree in our backyard would be laying on the ground and that for sure one would be coming through one of our windows. But luckily when I looked out our window all I saw was this...

So luckily it didn't hit our house, and they haven't broken yet. So back to our day... Josh had to work so I decided that I would take the kids to work with him and hang out at Costco for the day... at least it is warm there and they have food right? Well, after eating lunch there one of our friends called and invited the kids and me over to their house... where it was warm... to hang out while Josh worked. So we did, it sounded a lot better then hanging out at Costco, I probably could have lasted an hour there, but really for 5 hours, let's just say that I'm glad that my friend called.

So after a day of playing there we came home that night to see if we had power and if not pick up some clothes and blankets and go sleep at another friends. So as we are driving home it was erie, I felt like I was in one of those movies where a big disaster just hit and they are going back to where there home is/was to see the damage and everything is different. No lights were on anywhere, but we got hope when our exit had lights, as we drove we were looking everywhere for a glimpse of hope that we might have power. But as we pulled into the subdivision before ours there were no lights... my heart sunk, but as we got closer we saw a light coming from our subdivision. We got so excited, our neighbors lights were on and there was smoke from our heater coming from our house. Josh cleared the snow blocking our driveway (from the much appreciated plows) and I called our friends to let them know that we had power and wouldn't be needing a place to stay. I watched as Josh opened the garage and the light went on... hurray we have power... and then it went off... WHAT?!? As I looked back to the neighbors houses all of their homes were dark again. Josh headed over to the neighbors house to find out how long the power was on only to find out it was only on for 20 minutes. So after I packed up our stuff for the night and called our friends back to tell them it was a false alarm, we headed over there to get some much needed sleep. Even though Bryson had a rough night, crying and going between Josh and I to hold him.

Day 2: We went back home to get ready and see if the power had kicked back on but it hadn't. Our house was pretty cold at this point. So we called our friends up to see if we could hang out at their house again for the day. Josh and I were able to shower by lantern light, since we still had hot water, we packed up our stuff for the day and that night just in case, put our few items that we had in the fridge in our cooler and stuck it outside and headed out, Josh to work again, and me and the kids to our friends. I called our neighbor around 4pm to see if we had power back on yet and we didn't but she said that she would call once we did. After dinner we decided to rent a movie to watch for the night and around 8pm our neighbor called to tell us that our power was back on but she would call us if it went out again. So we watched the movie and didn't hear back from her so we headed home around 10pm to a warm house with lights! Here are some pictures from the last couple of days.

This really has been a crazy experience for us. It has been the 2nd time that our city has lost power like this in 5 months. We had decided to buy ourselves a camping stove for Christmas so that when the power goes out we could still cook some meals. But we haven't gotten it yet. We really wish that we would have gotten it now. We have slowly been trying to build up our 72 hour kits and year supply of food for our family and now after this we are looking into it a little more. We are very grateful for wonderful friends and for all of the help we have had during this time. And thanks to all of your prayers, I think they helped turn our power on sooner. People are still without power today.

I just wanted to share this last picture of how pretty it really looks, even though VERY dangerous, but once the sun has come out everything is glistening and looks so pretty.