What a crazy couple of weeks. Last Wednesday was supposed to be our last Brownie meeting, complete with parents and the ceremony. The other leaders and myself had just finished setting up the cafeteria with chairs, computer, gifts, etc.... when the dismissal announcements included the phrase, "Kids are to remain in their classrooms" and we got word of the TORNADO warning. Just then, boom... lights were out. So, I gathered Tommy and Grace and sat in the lobby with the other moms as the kids were being filed out into the hallway with their teachers to sit in tornado positions. Forty-five minutes later, we were still unsure of the future of the meeting. I figured let's just do it and get it over. But, as expected, the school said no. With the power outage and the craziness of finding routes home for the kids, it was way too chaotic. So, we packed it all up, froze the cake and went home. (The cake, by the way, was awesome... a sheet cake designed like a Brownie vest with all the girls' names on the patches!)
Our power was out for 9 hours that night.
Then on Tuesday of this week, storms began to hit just as I was to take Ben to taekwondo. I waited out the storms and left in the car for the next town with all 4 kids. We got to the TKD school with no issues. But coming home... HAILSTORM. Ugh. I finally made it back home with Reagan, Tommy and Grace. Mike was heading from work to pick up Ben from his class. Somehow that storm swung north, and Mike missed it entirely. Whew! But, sure enough... I returned home and clicked the garage door opener. Nothing. Dang it... no electricity again. It's beginning to become WAY too often. Our town loses power if someone exhales too fast, I swear. Fortunately this time it was only out for 3 hours... long enough to drive me nuts in bathing 2 kids by flashlight (who makes a 3.5 bathroom house with NO WINDOWS in any of the bathrooms???) and serving peanut-butter sandwiches to the same two kids before bedtime. Mike and Ben arrived home after several errands... 5 minutes after power was restored. Thankfully they brought dinner for Reagan and I.
Now, I say all this knowing full well that we are very lucky people. Some of the storms and flooding going on in this country have been awful. I suppose we can survive 12 hours with no A/C. What is going on though.... I don't remember having so many power outages growing up as a child? And as Ben would say, "What? You had electricity all of your life?" No kidding... he thought electricity wasn't around when we were kids.
