In the middle of the night Monday night, we had yet another horrible thunderstorm. This time we had 70 mph winds that made several of my friends' phones to receive warning alarms. My alarm did not go off, but even if it had, I had left my phone downstairs on the table. The storm was loud enough to wake me up anyway.
It was so loud that the windows sounded like they could blow in at any moment. The power flickered a couple of times, and then it was off for good around 3 a.m. I had to go downstairs to get my phone in the dark. My two oldest had their last day of Driver's Ed, and could not miss the final test. I was hopeful the power would come back on by the time we got up in the morning. It didn't. They went to class, and passed the test. We then stopped by a nearby McDonalds for lunch, because the power was still out and they had not eaten breakfast. The place was extremely busy, and cars were lined up on the main road waiting to turn into the parking lot. It was about that time that I found out 140,000 people in three counties had lost power, and our town was hit hard. We had seen evidence of it on the way to class. We saw several trees and large branches on the ground. Since it was going to be awhile, we went back home. I wanted to log on, but couldn't since my router needed electricity. I did have about half power on my phone, just enough to take a few Instagram pics. Kyle and I played board games for awhile. (He won all three. :P)
A friend of mine who had also lost power asked if we would like to go see a movie, or come over.. She lives on a lake, and we were not really feeling like a movie, so we decided to go over for a visit. She has a son who is very close to Kyle's age. They hung out, and played more games, while us moms had a chance to catch up. It was now nearing dinner time, but we were still both out of power. She has a really nice grill, so she suggested grilling whatever food she could find in her freezer. It actually turned out to be a great impromptu picnic. We had grilled fries, sausage, and shrimp.
Kyle's favorite part of the night was when he got to help start a campfire, and make Smores. I really liked that part too, since I don't get to have Smores very often. Soon it was time to go. I stopped by and picked up Kara from her friend's house. (they had power) As we pulled onto our street, we started to get excited. We saw lights on in some of the houses. As I tried the garage opener, and it opened, we let out a cheer. Our power was finally back on, 18 1/2 hours after it went out. It had only been on a couple of minutes when we got home. Kara was very happy. Today is her birthday, and she really wanted to spend the day at home with her best friend. While not having power was quite an inconvenience, it was also a blessing. It was nice to just spend the day offline, enjoy the people in my life.
A few years back we lost power during a microburst, and it was off for two days. The local power company had a tough time finding all the lines that had been severed by falling tree branches and whatnot. In the meantime all our neighbours shared their outdoor grills and food, so it ended up being not so bad.
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