Powerless

It started off as a weird day. The babies and I went for a short walk at 6:3AM because it had already been getting hot and plain old muggy. Not long after, I noticed that it started to get pretty dark out. That's when I noticed that the wind was picking up. And when I mean picking up, I mean 80 miles per hour. Within minutes, our backyard seemed to be hurricane-blown, the trees bending over, broken off branches and leaves blown everywhere. Garbage cans toppled over into the streets. We had to vacate the family room because it was in the line of 3 story tree fire. What did I save? Well, babies of course (saved first, for those who might ask). But after that...things we couldn't live without in the Mal house. Tv? No. (Can't live without it, but when you compare it to the things I DID save you'll see why.) Cameras or purses? No. Einstein jumper, activity chair, baby gym and basket of toys? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. What else? Laptop? No. The WIP Rippled Afghan that took dozens and dozens of hours and thousands of stitches? Heck YES. Boy do you see my priorities, huh?!? Besides the knitting, our life seems to be a "Ground Hogs Day" worth of bouncing the kids from activity jumper to swing to toys and the like every 15 minutes. They have a lot of toys and activities, but man do these boys get bored fast. Almost as quickly as Sam is going from non-mobile to rolling, crawling, help-standing to even trying to walk despite his near 9 month old body (adjusted, 7.5 mos).

We got lucky. Real lucky. While our neighbors got hit hard in the roof or had their mature trees split to the point of no return, ours held out and we only had to worry about raking up up loose branches and a yard full of leaves (didn't realize it's Fall already). Oh, and that tinsy tiny problem of NO POWER.

Not just one day, or two days or three days or four days...but FIVE full days of Amishhood.In the Summer heat. With two babies. and NO GENERATOR. The first day was miserable. We lost power by 9am. Even with the windows down and the blinds shut, it got pretty humid and gross. The second day was a little better. By the third day, it really cooled off...which we were soo thankful for. We ended up loosing nearly everything in our fridge and freezer. For the few things that were salvageable, we kept a cooler going.
Our routine of washing out the bottles and making 16 bottles for the next day turned into washing and making a couple on-the-fly.

It's kind of funny because it seemed like the "Survivor" show the way some people reacted to the power outage. No TV? OMG. Let's go out and buy a generator! My tv usually is always running in the background during the day. The silence was a little strange, sadly enough. However, it was nice to be released from the bondage a little bit. And not being able to run fans without the air was also greatly missed, but we some how survived. We usually use them as white noise for the boys as much as we use it to break up the stuffiness.

Anyways, to make this long story short, we finally got our power back late Friday, being in the last 200 houses to receive power in my hometown (large population). Probably didn't help that a truck picking up one of the trees on the side of the road knocked down a light pole holding electrical wires while I was going to a morning stroller ride.

We are glad to have power- light, electricity, air conditioning, etc. We love it all, even more so now.

Photos really doesn't show the entirety of the situation. Every house had a huge pile of tree limbs and branches for the trucks to take. I had more photos, but my other camera's USB cord is MIA, so these will have to do. I'm guessing our neighborhood was on the news since it got hit one of the hardest because of all of the mature trees that have become very brittle from drought-like weather these past few years.

I have some knitted toys to share with you all later on, and the shawl is waiting to be soaked and blocked. Interesting things to come this week. Visit back soon.