. . . And . . . We're back!

In what some would consider an act of mercy and consideration, we haven't posted in days. It's somewhat ironic that Hurricane Ike made such a little dent in my family's life (they live a mere 250 miles from Galveston), but his remnants made a mess of our rusty community here in Ohio. Hundreds of thousands were left without power, and fortunately, we were one of them! At 2:00 am this morning we came back on line.

So how did we spend our pioneer days and nights? Well, I had to go to work, where no natural disaster could prevent this assembly line from moving forward. Logan's school had power. And Jenny kept mothering. All of us expanded our appreciation for power. We were also able to assess our preparedness for another similar event in the future.

The worst part? Jenny made me play Phase 10, where if I win, I lose, and if I lose too much, I actually lose worse. So basically, it's a no win situation. Sounds fun, right?

Ahemm.  He won.  I mean he won and I lost, and all was well.  I actually enjoyed the power outage. No vacuuming, no laundering, no t.v.  The kids had a blast "camping" with their shake-to-light flashlights.  We have natural gas, so we could take hot showers, cook on the stovetop, and wash our dishes (ok, so I missed the dishwasher).  The only worry was keeping our food cold.  In an effort to be prepared, we bought an upright freezer this summer and packed it full of food--not so great in power outages.  We were told not to open the freezer for 48 hours and then to pack it with dry ice. If you ever need the cold stuff, check the yellow pages under dry ice.  I think (really, really hope) our food made it!