and with it came the power outages. We lost power at about 8:00 pm and, shame on us, we were terribly under prepared for it, but we managed to scare up enough matches and candles to get us through the night. The prospect of no coffee Friday morning didn’t help me sleep any; neither did the constant pounding of broken, icy chunks of maple tree on the roof directly above our bed or the sound of nearby transformers exploding and trees falling. Add to that the sounds of rasslin’ cats and snoring dog and it really was a challenge.
Friday morning we went out and got breakfast and the supplies that we should have had already and headed home to start a fire in the fireplace. We emptied the fridge and freezers and put everything outside to keep it cool. About the only things we could do were read and nap so I took care of the reading and Momma did the napping. We burned about a third cord of wood (and when I put a fire in the fireplace I PUT A FIRE IN THE FIREPLACE!) throughout the day and easily lost the temperature battle to the howling wind. At 3:00 in the afternoon we were at 10 degrees inside (that’s 50 for you non Canadians!) I was bringing in ever more firewood for the long cold night ahead and putting our dairy products in the trash when our neighbor told us that there was an Ameren exec living a couple of doors down. They were hooking him up as we spoke. And we were on the same transformer as him. Sure enough, by 4:30 we had seen the light.
House re-warmed and bellies growling, we got ready to order pizza delivery. All of our food was outside piled haphazardly into coolers and I was too lazy to do anything about it other than dial the phone. We called the McCarty house and found out that they were still without power and were now without firewood as well. I loaded up the truck, restocked their wood rack and brought TNH’s uncles Matt and Lucas back to our nice warm house. Then about 20 minutes into WWE Smackdown the power went back out and the slumber party was officially over. Our power came back on an hour later and, thankfully, has remained on.
Saturday morning was back to life as usual. We refilled the fridge and freezers and then went out to help remove a tree from Grandma Katie and Grandpa Bob’s driveway. We took some firewood over to Great Grandma Carol’s, got her fireplace roaring, and emptied her fridge and freezer, then back home to assemble the Christmas tree.
Sunday was more firewood lugging and more Christmas tree assembling. Here's the finished product:
Luckily most everyone has their power back and so we shall treat ourselves to a nice relaxing night by the fire.
We should get back on our regular blogging schedule soon.
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