After the Storm

Well, we survived the storm!! But no matter how much preparation you do, it's just never enough! We lost power Tuesday morning, before the boys even woke up. Of course Dalton wanted to watch cartoons, and explaining electricity to a three year old is impossible.

"Can I watch cartoons?"

Insert explanation here--"So that's why you can't watch TV."

"Is the TV broken?"

"No, we just went over this. There's no electricity, so there's no lights, no TV..."

"Oh. Hey, I know! I'll go see if the TV in your room works..."

Okay, well, whatever.

So the power came back on after about an hour or so. The ice and freezing rain continued to fall all day long. Everything outside was just covered. We lost power again around 4:00pm on Tuesday. Since it would be dark soon, I gathered our "supplies". My lantern worked for all of about two minutes before the bulbs burnt out. :) We got wood from the neighbor and started a fire. We cooked chicken on the grill, and boiled water for some oh so yummy instant mashed potatoes (although I added some cheese and ranch dressing to them so they weren't too bad, after all). We set up the mattress in the living room, and Dalton set up his little tent. We went to bed about 10:00. Chris and I took turns through the night getting up about every two hours or so to add wood to the fire and keep it going.

But even so, when we got up on Wednesday morning, the thermostat registered at a whopping 52 degrees in the house! So we made some calls...finally found some friends (shout out to Robert and Lindsey!!) in nearby Centerton that still had power. Their power lines are underground so it was unlikely they would lose power. We took a key to the neighbor so they could check on our animals and let the dogs out to potty regularly. So we packed it all up and headed to R&L's place. Man, alive, you forget how much you have to pack for an infant! Of course we also tried to pack some of the food that would go bad...milk, meat, etc...plus we didn't want to eat all of R&L's food while we were there.

After we got to R&L's house, Chris took the both of them back into town and dropped them off at work and then he worked, too. R&L's satellite was frozen, so I had my choice of three channels that the rabbit ears picked up...one that played infomercials all day, one that played fuzzy stuff, and one that played the news all day. Which would have been fine, except they kept running the same 20 minute clip over and over and over!! But, we had heat and lights and food, so it was okay.

Once Daddy and R&L all came home, we sure did have fun! Robert is really a child in a grown man's body who refuses to grow up, so Dalton had wooden trains to play with, and Lincoln Logs, and all sorts of little odds and ends of toys. The whole time we were there, Dalton didn't play with his own toys one time! We also listened to Robert play actual real songs on his harmonica, and also watched him do some juggling (I know, right?!?), and Dalton helped to throw him some balls into the mix. Dalton had a blast, and I cannot even begin to appropriately show how grateful we are to R&L for putting up with us.

Our neighbor called about 10:30pm that night to let us know the power was back on. Since the kids were already in bed, we stayed the night and headed home Thursday morning. The normally ten minute trip home took over an hour. But we made it! And now the clean up begins. :)

Luckily we trimmed our trees way back just a couple years ago, so we didn't lose anything big. But the neighbor on our other side lost several huge branches, one of which fell over our fence and bounced off our swing set. No damage though.

The neighbor a couple houses down lost about a thousand limbs in the front yard, many of which blocked the road for a long time.

Another neighbor across the street and one house down had a transformer blow in his back yard, which caught fire and burned for quite a while. And a tree fell in our neighborhood and took out a power pole. But we did not have any major damage, except for a few water leaks in the roof. We have some minor water spots that have shown up in the ceiling since the ice started melting. One in the dining room, and two in the living room. We have someone coming to do an estimate this week and will file an insurance claim soon. We're very lucky that's all the trouble we've had.

So Dalton has not been outside all week long, and the dogs of course refuse to go outside, and then when I do get them out, they just stand on the covered porch and try to pee off it. :) Which I guess I can't blame them. Reggie and Toby both went bounding outside the first day...Reggie fell and Toby slid across the entire yard and crashed into the fence. :) Both are okay...and, well, Bravo? He's smart enough (and stubborn) that he only went within about two feet of the ice.

These trees, I think, is one of my favorite pictures. I took it from the car on our way back home on Thursday morning.

A full seven days later and a couple of my sisters still don't have power. Both are running on generators. Several schools don't have power back. And a lady that Chris works with was told that it may be March before she gets her power back! Yikes! A lot of these people that are far out in the county are on well water, so when the power is out, the well can't pump, so they don't even have water. Arkansas has been declared a disaster state...