What a week!!

Well we had Julianne's family birthday party on Sunday. As we were preparing for her party the winds started to really pick up and at 3:00 p.m. our electricity went out. I was not too concerned since we were having bolognese and we had a gas stove top. So we went on with the party without the electricity. The winds continued to become stronger and stronger throughout the party and most of our family members wanted to get back to their homes so that they could see if they had any damage and to get prepared if they did not have electricity. After everyone left we walked around the neighborhood with our neighbors to check out all the damage that the winds were creating. The news reported that the winds got up to 60-75 miles per hour. We made the kids wear helmets in case more tree branches fell. We actually should not have been out in the storm but was pretty fascinating. When we actually went out on the street it was very scary. There were so many tree limbs down, trees uprooted and tree debri all over the roadway. It was nothing that I have never seen. Mallory was very scared and we were afraid that Nathan was going to fall down. We never got any rain it was just the wind. The wind remained strong until about 10:00 p.m. when it finally died down. The local electric company, AEP, reported that on Monday 625,000 customers were without power. That included us and most of everyone that we know. That was about half of their customers. The windstorm was actually the remnants of hurricane Ike which just went crazy over our area for some reason. I don't know if the winds were that strong when it moved over the Midwest but I know that a cold air front was moving this way so it might have collided with Ike and become stronger. I really have no idea since I did not get to watch the news since today. I did not even know that it was coming before it came so I was really surprised. But most people were very shocked at how strong it was. I could not imagine how strong a real hurricane would be like. This was strong enough for me.

So fast forward to today and we finally got power last night at 8:30, which was Wednesday night. So we were out of power from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday night. It was a long time. I had to throw out all of our refrigerated food and get all new food this morning. The kids were out of school until today, Thursday. And there are still a lot of people without electricity. I guess what the problem was is that AEP sent their employees to Texas to help with the aftermath of the hurricane and they were not here to help the residents in Columbus. So that is why it has taken so long to get the electricity back on. Some of the reports still say people will not get their electricity until Friday or by the latest Sunday. I guess that they have gotten the AEP crew back from Texas and have gained additional helpers from other states to help in the effort. So restoring power should start to become quicker with more crews in Columbus.

The girls did pretty well during the outage. They did not really have a hard time going to bed or adjusting to the lack of lighting. they mostly played with the neighborhood children during the day and we read books at night. So overall it was not too bad. I actually enjoyed not having the TV or computer on during the evenings. D and I actually talked about not having TV or computer on one night a week so that we can concentrate on ourselves and the kids. We were defiantly less stressed out since there were less distractions for us. However, I was a little stressed out by Wednesday because I was tired of running downstairs to get the milk and other cold food and Nathan did not really understand that crying at the fridge for milk was not getting him anything. We were lucky that the weather was nice, we knew we were not going to freeze, and that we had great neighbors to rely on.

Here are some pictures of the debris left in our yard, which was not as bad as others.


Here are some pictures from our neighborhood.



I had clothes in the dryer and washer that were not completed so I had to improvise and dry them outside.



The kids played with silly string while they were out of school.


Here is Julianne at her party. She had a great time and this year she loved the attention. She used to not like being the center of the attention but now she does. Here is her loving the attention.



Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-experiencing a storm like this with my family and knowing that no one was injured
-having electricity
-seeing the community come together to help neighbors
-spending quality time with my family
-Julianne enjoying her birthday party
-not having any house damage from the storm
-did I mention having electricity!!