What a week!

This past week I have realized just how thankful I am to NOT be Laura Ingalls. I've always loved that show and they make their life seem like so much fun. I always thought it'd be great to be a part of the Ingalls family. This week I was jolted back into reality when we were without power for 6 days. *Note to self* It was not fun!

Last Thursday evening when the storm hit, we were at home watching the tree branches fall out of our neighbors tree. Then my mom called to let us know they didn't have power, and that made me realize just how bad it was. It hadn't really occurred to me to be concerned about losing power, until I talked to my mother.

We finally lost power late Thursday night sometime around midnight. There wasn't much we could do about it, so we went to bed.

Friday morning, Dan went to work and left me in a cold house with nothing to do. I lasted until about 10am and then I called my neighbor across the street, that still had electricity, and asked if I could come over and spend the day with her and the kids.

When we realized that we weren't getting power restored anytime soon, Dan and I packed up and went to Matt and Diva's to spend the night.

Saturday morning was the realization that if we don't get heat in our house soon our pipes could freeze. We have the old hot water radiators and if that water froze we'd be in BIG trouble. So, we set out on the hunt for firewood. The plan: To build a fire in the fireplace and try and raise the temp. in the house enough so that it could sit overnight and not reach freezing. Well... that didn't work as well as we'd hoped. We got a blazing fire going, but it wasn't heating more than the living room. Luckily Dan's dad had gotten his generator going and he was going to bring it over to our house and let us borrow it for a few hours. Finally by 10pm we'd gotten the temp up to about 59 degrees.

So, back to Matt and Diva's we went to spend the night. After church on Sunday we located a generator at Sear's in Danville and so we headed over there to pick it up. Of course it didn't come with the right plug and we were already home before we realized that and every place that would carry them around here were out of stock.

By now it's about 7:30pm and Dan's dad comes back over to help him hotwire the generator. Finally at about 9pm they get the generator going. Now we have heat! Dan was able to get the right plug Monday morning at Ace Hardware. They'd just gotten a shipment in and he got there early enough to grab one.

The generator was such a blessing because we could run the heat and lights and pretty much everything we needed except the oven and washer/dryer. I was extremely thankful though when we finally got full power restored Wednesday at 4:30.

The men who worked in our backyard were from Florida. I'm sure they aren't used to this cold weather. The channel 3 news was even in our backyard too, but they didn't knock on my door to talk to me. That's just as well, I wouldn't have wanted to anyway.

So, now I can start my holiday baking and start preparing for Christmas. We are hosting Dan's side for the holiday's this year. I have alot to do before then.

Here's what it looked like out our front porch window.