Okay, first off, if you are from Utah or any other snow-infested state, don't laugh at my post. Here in the awesome state of Washington, we just don't get snow very often. Well, in the mountains we do, but not here in Lakewood or Seattle or Olympia. If we do get snow, people panic, stores shut down, schools close, people drive like idiots. Even if there is only an inch or two on the ground.
But, in our defense, we don't get snow that often. (I feel like I said that already). We don't have experience driving in the snow, and I think the entire area of Western Washington only has like twenty snow plows to our name, so roads, even the freeways, are slow to get plowed if they get plowed at all. And our snow turns to ice really fast, making for more idiot drivers.
So when we had our huge snowstorm in January, Facebook was lit up with scoffers (mostly from Utah) who thought us Washingtonians were so silly to cancel church and school, to stock up on groceries so we didn't have to leave the house, and buy fuel for our generators. People panicking over a few inches of snow? The Utahns were all over the teasing and whatever.
Well, in your face, Utah.
Not only did we get like ten to twelve inches overnight (a record for our state) but we had a huge windstorm two days later that knocked out almost everyone's power because, unlike Utah, we have trees. Lots of trees, and huge trees, that were already heavy and weak from carrying snow and ice. So when the windstorm hit all the branches and trees that couldn't handle it fell, falling over roadways, into houses, and, of course, power lines.
Our power went out around 3pm. Which was fine, since there was still plenty of light outside that my kids could see what they were doing. We pulled out the crayons and color books and Bendaroos and my kids got all artsy - it's amazing what they can do when there is to TV or Wii to distract them! And....then it got dark. Bryan was still out being hero to the neighborhood - making sure his home teaching families had fire wood and helping connect generators. He came home about 5:30 to help me manually light our gas stove (we were expecting the missionaries for dinner) so that I could make dinner (they never made it). But we ate good! By the time it got dark, my kids were restless. They couldn't see with the flashlights and candles enough to do much, and Bryan was having a hard time getting our generator started. Turns out you aren't supposed to drain your fuel when you're done using it because it rusts it out...we found out the hard way!
After dinner my mom called and heard we didn't have our generator running. It was getting pretty cold, and since her generator was running we trekked over to her house! It was so nice to have lights and stuff! We put the kids to bed at Nana's house and Bryan and I crashed in a spare room with Jake. Okay, there is a reason I don't sleep in the same room as Jake anymore. It was awful! I don't think he slept more than an hour or so at a time. At bed time we turned off the generator, so there were no fans and it was so dead silent. So every noise Bryan and I made (including Bryan's awful snoring) woke him up. I was so over the power being out.
The power was out all the next day. We decided to take the boys and Carissa's kids to the school down the street to go sledding. We found out the inner tubes for swimming pools work great in the snow! Anyway, Carissa and Adam were living it up in Hawaii (while the rest of us were freezing and whatever - so ironic) and so her kids were staying with my mom. So we also learned that when it snows and you want to go outside, you learn real fast how few snow clothes you own! But we made do with what we had and the kids had a blast. It was so fun! They were a little crazy, jumping on tubes and doing trains down the hill.
We stayed at my moms house all that day until Bryan got a call from our neighbors across the street - they are two older sisters who live together. Anyway, they had no power and their house was at like 42 degrees! They had spent the last two days freezing and finally couldn't take it anymore, so they called and asked if they could sleep at our house! We felt so bad that they waited so long to call us, so Bryan got a generator from my dad and used it to power our house. We cranked the heat and had them over to spend the night. It was a little weird having new people in our house, but we felt really good knowing that they were warm. Early that morning the power came back on and we were saved!!! Needless to say, we got the generator fixed for the next time the power goes out. I love electricity! But we are proud to say we survived :)
3 comments:
That was a crazy week. Funny how i left from snow in a place that its not suppose to really be there and came to absolutely no snow in a place there is suppose to be tons. A little backwards, don't you think!?!
We need a little power outage now and then to get our kids away from electronics and into art and other play. I want a power outage (just for an afternoon of course!) Glad you had fun and jealous you got to sled, we didn't get enough snow here.
I feel like my kids are way more creative without power. I'm so glad my kids were with people who had a generator though! It was nice to know they were safe while I was living it up in 80 something degree weather :)
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