32 Hours Without Power

Friday night (June 29) , between 9-10, I was laying in bed and heard thunder. I got up to open the blinds because I love seeing the lighting when it’s storming at night. When I opened the blinds, I saw that the wind was out of control. I’ve never seen it like that before. I immediately woke up Greg and asked him to check his phone to see if there was a tornado warning. If we had any trees at all around our house, we wouldn’t have even checked for the warning, we would have just taken the boys straight into the basement. We both got up and were looking outside and I kept going around checking windows because the wind was so strong it sounded like it was coming into the house. During the storm we lost power. We’re in the middle of a heat wave, so we were not happy. We figured it come back on soon. Sleeping was impossible. Evan woke up several times because he wanted to cover up but he was too hot to. He sleeps with his blanket on top of him every night and it was just too hot to do that. By morning, the power still wasn’t on, but since we didn’t get any sleep the night before, we had time to come up with a plan for the day in case that happened. We all got ready, packed some snacks, change of clothes, bathing suits, etc. and headed out for the day. It was too hot to stay in the house so we knew we needed to get out and do things and we also were afraid that if the power wasn’t on by bedtime, the boys would have problems sleeping, so our goal was to stay busy and wear the boys our so they slept good that night. We decided to go out for breakfast at Chick-Fil-A and that was when we realized how serious this storm was. The entire town was out of power, there were branches, trees, etc everywhere. It was insane. We found two places that were open and they were packed. We ended up going to Sheetz and getting some breakfast and coffee and then heading to a park before it got too hot.

Evan fell asleep while we were driving around

 You can see in the background how busy it was.

The boys had a great time at the park, but the slides were already burning up and it was only about 7:30-8:00 in the morning. After playing there for awhile, we went by the house and grabbed a couple more things we thought of and let the boys play in the front yard for a few minutes. Then, we headed to the splash park. We were worried that it wouldn’t be on if it had lost power, but we were in luck and it was going. We were the only ones there, it was so crazy to us that other people didn’t take advantage of this free park to cool off. The boys had a blast—all 3 boys. ;)

 After the splash park we went to find somewhere to eat. There was still only a few places open. We stopped at Burger King and the line was so long. We quickly figured out that the boys weren’t going to wait there, so we left and went down the road to Taco Bell, it’s not in the most convenient location, so I guess people forgot about it and there was hardly anybody there. We got our food right away and the boys really liked it.

After Taco Bell, the boys fell asleep immediately, so we drove around for a little bit. Greg went and got his hair cut and ran into the store to get a few things.

 This was the tree we thought caused us to lose power.

 After the boys woke up, we went to Bounce and Play. We thought it’d be much busier for being a Saturday and the fact that so many people were without power, but it wasn’t too bad at all. The boys had a blast, we stayed there for a long time.

 This was the first time the boys have crawled all the way up and went through the tube and down the slide on the other side. I can't believe how big they're getting.

 This is the thing they were going through. They went up and over to the slide so many times.

 Then we took them over to the bounce part. Adults are only allowed on the bounce things during certain hours two days a week because the adults were being so rough. We weren't sure if the boys would climb up and go down by themselves. But they did, without any hesitation.

After Bounce and Play, we went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner. The boys played there some and we ate dinner.

We came home and let the boys play in the yard while I sprayed them with the hose to cool them off. While me and the boys were playing, Greg set up the basement for us all to sleep. He got the pack n plays ready, all the bath stuff, etc. We took the boys inside and bathed them. We put them in their pack n plays and expected the worst. But, they did really good. I peeked around the corner once and saw them both standing and waving at each other and Carter was saying “hi”! to Evan. But, they never cried and after I caught them waving at each other and told them to lay down, they layed down and went to sleep. I was so surprised and relieved. It was still really hot, but it was cooler in the basement than the rest of the house and all the hotels around us were completely booked up. Greg and I took quick showers and then went to bed (in the basement) about 7:30-8:00.
We all slept fairly well considering how hot it was. Our busy day probably helped us all sleep better. Evan woke up about 5:00, but it was still dark out, so gave him a flashlight to play with until it was light enough to start our day again. We packed up the car again and got ready to go to breakfast and the park. We were about to leave and Greg ran back in for something and the power came on while he was in there. We were so relieved. We ended up still taking the boys to the park so the house would have a chance to cool off a little bit.

This was almost 3 hours after the power came back on and our house felt so cool. I never thought 81 degrees in our house would feel cool.

After we got home, we let the boys watch tv while we cleaned out the freezers and fridge. We had to through away everything. It was so hard tossing stuff that we had just bought, especially stuff we hadn’t opened yet, but everything was bad. We all took a nap and then went to the store to buy all the necessities that we had to throw out.

 It definitely wasn’t the ideal way to spend the weekend, but we realize how lucky we are. We got our power back before a lot of people. And we’re so lucky that we’re all safe and nothing was damaged. A few people in Charlottesville were killed by falling trees. There was a lot of damage to people’s houses, cars, boats, etc. The pictures on Facebook were scary. There was a house in our neighborhood, in the back that lines up to the trees that had a tree fall on their deck. So, we’re very thankful for the way the weekend turned out and Greg and I both felt that Saturday was a pretty fun day for the boys.