Wow, what a week!!! We had freezing rain last Sunday night/Monday and we lost our electricity Monday morning at 8:00. The longest we've ever gone without electricity has been about 4 hours so I thought, no problem!!! Boy was I wrong! My mom called and said their electricity had gone out at 5:30 that morning. At least, we have our gas stove and could turn it on and off to warm up a little bit and to COOK!!! (You wouldn't want to keep it on all the time because of the gas usage and the carbon monoxide poisoning threat.) Another plus is that it was (and still is) very cold so the food in the refrigerator didn't go bad.
I'm normally very warm natured and don't even wear sweatshirts or fleece shirts often but I put on a turtle neck shirt AND a fleece shirt. I also had on my lined wind pants. We lit candles and the kerosene lamp and kept ourselves busy. I was shocked when it didn't come back on before we went to bed. I was even more shocked when we woke up and still had no electricity. I was fine with plenty to do . . . I worked on putting together a Christmas Countdown, fixed a big pot of soup, checked my Christmas gift list, and then read a book. I did get everything that I'd bought for people, not living in my home, out and ready to wrap but realized I didn't have any tissue paper or enough boxes. Ugh!!! So, I put it all in a nice stack and we ate a nice bowl of hot soup, which went a long way to warming us up!
When it got dark outside my husband lit every candle in the house! I asked him what we were going to do if the electricity didn't come on the next day and he said we'd have to go into town and get more (a 20-30 minute trip in the best conditions). He said that if he didn't have the place lit up he would have to go to bed, even though it was only 6pm.
We went to bed around 10. We usually have our comforter and a blanket on our bed in the winter but that night we added another heavy bedspread. All the kids added an extra blanket and we all slept great, UNTIL we had to get up in the cold.
We cooked up some hot bowls of oatmeal to heat us up a bit. Later I reheated the soup I'd made the day before. We debated about going into town and finally went armed with my weekly grocery list, making the list as small as possible, since it didn't look like dh would work much this week. I hoped Wal-Mart would be open; my mom told me that it was closed the day before. We got into town around 12:30 and found that they must've just opened within the hour. They were restocking the perishables when we arrived. We did find some candles and the few groceries I needed, as well as some tissue paper and some boxes. We went to Aldi, which re-opened at 1:00, and got the few things I needed from there and home we went.
On the way home, we debated about going to my sister's home, which still had electricity, to take some showers. They did offer for us to spend the night but I rather like sleeping in the cold, it is the getting out of bed that bothers me. LOL So we went over there after eating some dinner and spent the evening. We all got showers and nice and warm; and my children and dh got their gaming fix (X-Box Live), as the boys' gameboys ran out of charge. Needless to say, they recharged them while were there.
The next morning we got up in the freezing cold but thankfully our electricity came on around 10:00 that morning!!! Hallelujah!!! We are so blessed; I know others that still don't have their electricity back on. My parents' electricity came on around 6pm but after about 45 minutes, it went back off. When Dad called, they said that two polls were down and they had to turn it off and wouldn't be able to get it back on until Friday or Monday. Thankfully, it came on yesterday around 11 a.m.
Thursday I went Christmas shopping with my mother and we met my sister and her young daughter for lunch. We had both gotten much accomplished, even though many stores were still without power. We had planned to go on Friday but the weathermen were predicting rain changing over to snow and then accumulating. We decided we better go a day earlier. As it turned out, we were too far south for any accumulation at all, which is a big bummer because we love snow and like to have some several times each winter, to play in.
Well, I've finally gotten caught up on my email and now my blog. I've also printed out some craft ideas from some websites for my Sunday School class tomorrow, AND I even found a website with Christmas carol sheet music that you can have it transpose it to any key you want. Awesome!
I'm giving them the Advent Paper Chains as my gift to them. Things are tight so this will have to do this year.
Well, I'm going to run so that I can get these chains made up, supplies gathered, and food started for tomorrow to take to church (Taco Soup). We have play practice after church and they said they'd supply dinner (probably pizza) but I cannot have pizza (because of my diet) and dh is allergic to beef and won't eat pork, because of concerns that he might be allergic to it as well, so I thought I'd take this yummy soup with us to share.
(Me and my dd, Tiffany on an easy to climb tree limb on vacation in VA in 2007.) These are my ramblings on homeschooling and whatever else comes to mind.
Counting Down
The Holidays are over and I'm not quite ready to start a new count down yet. Maybe I should start a counting up the number of days I've stayed on my "diet".
