Patriot's Day Storm

Um, a whole week since I last posted? Yikes. A long story made longer update:

The kids started their Spring Vacation last Friday.
Normal Saturday.
Sunday I prepared for the upcoming storm, which started.
Monday, it came on harder, and hung on for several more days. Didn't stop raining/snowing until Wednesday, midday I think. We were on edge the whole time. Lost power at 7am Monday. In our house that means no heat, water in (private electric pumped well), water out (*septic, electric pumps that too), cooking, or main sump pump on top of the usual no lights. You could hear trees snapping outside. Not fun.
Lucky thing DH spent most of Saturday intalling a back up battery powered sump pump system. Without it I would have had a flooded basement. The basement with that furnace which heats the water and house. Expensive thing to replace that would be!
DH managed to get home Monday morning from work only by leaving the car about a mile away where the tree had fallen, the one that took our power with it. I had received a call from a neighbor stating that if he was going to come home at all (not his regular shift time) that he'd better head out right then since the water on the other side of our main road was rising fast (no water and then 6 inches 20 minutes later).
By mid afternoon our phone line was also out. So our crappy cell phone battery could only be charged in the car, which naturally we couldn't go far, nevermind the fact that we were afraid if we left we would't be able to get back to the house. Losing the phone made things more complicated, and me a bit more ugly, I hadn't been able to shower- you know how that goes.
We have lived her for 6 years now. We have lost our power many times, but never lasting longer than a few hours. So this was not exactly fun.
And the kids wanted more than anything was to play outside. Um , with trees falling down around us? Nope, don't think so.
The same neighbor took DH down to the car when the tree was romoved enough for people to drive through. Funny I can't remember when that was exactly.

Tuesday at 2:30 our power came on. It was great. :)


Over the next few days I have been busy with putting the house back together. We lost most of our groceries in the fridge/freezer. So I threw everything out and cleaned the fridge real good. Then I hit the store to replenish. The basement floor needed a good scrubbing with bleach in a particular area. The coolers we had tried to use to keep what we could save cold were scrubbed up too.Lucky for us there was a little bit of snow left outside during the storm that I could grab to stuff into the coolers to keep our milk and a few other items cold. Then catching up on laundry and the regular stuff like that.
The kids went to Grandma's Wed through to Friday. So that helped with getting things back in order. And all of this on top of the regular busyness of vacation.
Oh and I forgot to mention- the library waved the fees for the movies I couldn't return during the storm. :)
Thank goodness for friendly people who let you recharge your large batteries for free. For trees that stay where they are supposed to near our house. For Coleman Camp stoves that heat water for coffee. And DH willing to stand in the crazy and drive through the crazy to get you a hot breakfast sandwich for each person to warm our hands and tummies, fresh batteries for the basement and to heat said water for coffee (and cocoa for the kids) .