Power Outage

  I have been a little absent from blogging for the past week or so because from Friday June 30th- Thursday, July 5th we were out of power.  For us that means no electricity and no running water! It was an adventure in camping at home.

On Saturday the house was still pretty cool and the kids enjoyed cuddling for a book. 

On Friday night we had a bad thunderstorm come through.  The kids were already asleep in bed when the lights started flickering, and then they stayed out.  We dug through the cabinets for candles and flashlights and ultimately decided just to go to bed and hoped the power would be on by morning.

Sometimes entertainment comes from stickers bought at the dollar bin at Target.  You can see all the bottled water in the background. 

No such luck.  On Saturday morning we used our phones to read the news and realized how extensive the power outage was.  We made the best of it by putting the refrigerator stuff we wanted to keep in coolers and tried to stay cool without A/C in the 100 degree heat! Saturday afternoon Trey and Jay braved going into town to look for ice.  It was kind of a mad house with everyone else buying up all the ice and people waiting for delivery trucks, but they were successful.  They also got bottled water and some bottles frappacinos for me, since I couldn't have my morning coffee without electricity!

Staying cool drinking bottled water through a straw.  You can see our dryer set up behind them.  After  swimming each night, I would hang out all the towels and bathing suits on the drying racks near the windows for them to dry off for the next night. 

That evening we took a bath in the creek to cool off.  The water felt like bath water and I never thought soaping up in creek water would feel so good!  In fact we felt clean enough to go to church the next day.  We just needed to get out of the house so we went to church and then bought some more provisions for food since we realized this was going to be a multiple day event.  Hello- juice boxes, poptarts, soda and other things I do not normally buy.  I also stocked up on canned fruit and those toddler food pouches that had a serving of fruit and veggies in them. Those things were expensive and I had never really seen them before except in chick-fil-a, but Charlotte LOVED them so she had one with every meal.  I tried to serve them pop tarts for breakfast, but neither of the kids would eat them.  They had never had one before and just didn't care for the taste.

Toddler food pouches.  It made me think about making green smoothies and my own pouches for Charlotte to eat since she seems to eat anything that comes out of this type of container.

Another way we adapted was all sleeping in the basement. We have a double bed down there already, so we set up Charlotte's pack 'n play in one corner and a mattress for Trey in another. They both did really good down there and it stayed around 70 degrees so we all woke up feeling refreshed and cool. 

This was dinner the last night we were at home.  We grilled the homemade french bread I had in the freezer that had thawed, and cut up tomatoes and garlic from the cooler that we had in the fridge before the power went out. 

During the days we tried to keep everyone cool and hydrated and we often drove into town just to stay cool and buy more ice for the cooler.  As meat thawed in the freezer we would cook it for the next meal.  I got a little tired of grilled chicken.  Every evening we would cool off and take a bath in the creek.  It really wasn't so bad not having power, except for finding out each day it would be longer and longer until it was restored.  On Tuesday we were running out of clean clothes and we found out it would later in the week when we got power (we were told originally it would be Monday night or Tuesday morning from the facebook messages by the power company) so we decided to pack up all the laundry and toiletry essentials and head to my parent's house in Richmond for some regular showers, A/C, and a bit of normalcy. 

Charlotte sat in the train box while she watched us fix food from the coolers.