Where oh where do I begin? How do you summarize something that is on such a grand scale? I will try my best to tell our story.
On Monday, January 26th I called my hubby just as I always do and he told me that I needed to go and "prepare" for what was going to happen over night. Now the forecast had called for ice and snow, but it had been downplayed some by the local media. My hubby however works for the National Weather Service and they said that it had the potential to be the worst storm in recent history. So, I loaded up the toddler and headed to the store for a camp stove and fuel and anything else I could think of. We knew there was potential for the power to go out because of the ice and at 6am that is just what happened. We were awakened to the sight and sound of transformers blowing up. Bright flashes and then nothing. All was quite.
Just as quickly as the power went out the house started to cool. We were just trying to imagine what we were going to do. Well, I called my mother and at that time she still had power and a gas fireplace. We decided to head over there and stay so that the kids would be warm. Just as we were about to leave she called to let us know that the power had gone out, but thankfully the fireplace still worked.
Maneuvering through town was quite the task and the sights took our breath away. Everything was covered in ice, power lines were lying on the ground and hanging so low we had to be careful not to snag one as we were driving under. We made it to her house, put our frozen/refrigerated items outside and made plans to spend a day or two there. Little did we know how long we would really be there!
Ham radios were our only forms of listening to what was happening to the outside world. Hubby was eventually able to rig up a makeshift antenna with some soda cans so that we could pick up a tv channel for our laptop. We found out that they were estimating that power could be out for almost 20 days for us and 30 days for my mom! We just couldn't believe it.
After 3 days of no power and no showers we decided to head South to Nashville, TN. Since my birthday was coming up on Saturday I felt I deserved a shower :) We got to the hotel on Friday and though there were 6 of us crammed in a 2 room suite, it was nice. The shower, the food, all of it. We stocked up on supplies and ended up having my FIL to bring us some propane canisters from Alabama for our cook stove because we couldn't find any back home or where we had looked while in Nashville.
We headed back on Sunday and when we arrived back at my mother's we were excited to see that the small lamp in her bedroom was on! Power, we had power!! That was short lived though, about 5 minutes later it was gone. However after fixing a camp stove meal of mac-n-cheese the power came back on. We got excited with the hopes that ours would be on as well. And when we went to check the next day, it was. We packed up our stuff and headed back to the house only to find that our hot water heater was busted (cracked more like it). So, back to Mom's we went and there we stayed for almost another week until we got the situation taken care of.
I'm glad to say that we are back at home and things are slowly getting back to normal. The kids are back in school and we are lucky enough to have power. Others however aren't so lucky. It may be at least 4 more weeks before they have any and we're currently bracing for a string of storms that may be Hurricane Ike force.
I think I'm ready to move!
*here are some pictures from our house and the last picture is from my mom's front yard.
On Monday, January 26th I called my hubby just as I always do and he told me that I needed to go and "prepare" for what was going to happen over night. Now the forecast had called for ice and snow, but it had been downplayed some by the local media. My hubby however works for the National Weather Service and they said that it had the potential to be the worst storm in recent history. So, I loaded up the toddler and headed to the store for a camp stove and fuel and anything else I could think of. We knew there was potential for the power to go out because of the ice and at 6am that is just what happened. We were awakened to the sight and sound of transformers blowing up. Bright flashes and then nothing. All was quite.
Just as quickly as the power went out the house started to cool. We were just trying to imagine what we were going to do. Well, I called my mother and at that time she still had power and a gas fireplace. We decided to head over there and stay so that the kids would be warm. Just as we were about to leave she called to let us know that the power had gone out, but thankfully the fireplace still worked.
Maneuvering through town was quite the task and the sights took our breath away. Everything was covered in ice, power lines were lying on the ground and hanging so low we had to be careful not to snag one as we were driving under. We made it to her house, put our frozen/refrigerated items outside and made plans to spend a day or two there. Little did we know how long we would really be there!
Ham radios were our only forms of listening to what was happening to the outside world. Hubby was eventually able to rig up a makeshift antenna with some soda cans so that we could pick up a tv channel for our laptop. We found out that they were estimating that power could be out for almost 20 days for us and 30 days for my mom! We just couldn't believe it.
After 3 days of no power and no showers we decided to head South to Nashville, TN. Since my birthday was coming up on Saturday I felt I deserved a shower :) We got to the hotel on Friday and though there were 6 of us crammed in a 2 room suite, it was nice. The shower, the food, all of it. We stocked up on supplies and ended up having my FIL to bring us some propane canisters from Alabama for our cook stove because we couldn't find any back home or where we had looked while in Nashville.
We headed back on Sunday and when we arrived back at my mother's we were excited to see that the small lamp in her bedroom was on! Power, we had power!! That was short lived though, about 5 minutes later it was gone. However after fixing a camp stove meal of mac-n-cheese the power came back on. We got excited with the hopes that ours would be on as well. And when we went to check the next day, it was. We packed up our stuff and headed back to the house only to find that our hot water heater was busted (cracked more like it). So, back to Mom's we went and there we stayed for almost another week until we got the situation taken care of.
I'm glad to say that we are back at home and things are slowly getting back to normal. The kids are back in school and we are lucky enough to have power. Others however aren't so lucky. It may be at least 4 more weeks before they have any and we're currently bracing for a string of storms that may be Hurricane Ike force.
I think I'm ready to move!
*here are some pictures from our house and the last picture is from my mom's front yard.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment