BRRR....

(This will be my second attempt at this post as I lost power again when writing it the first time!)

Did you hear about our weather? I hear it made the national news. Not that I saw ANY news, national or local, on it.

Thursday night we had a pretty major wind storm come through the area. It raged all night long knocking over fences, trees, power lines, trampolines, and anything that wasn't nailed down. It was fierce and powerful. We had a tree come down a few blocks from our house knocking out our power about 5:30 Thursday evening. I had my first Enrichment class that night, so you can imagine how disappointing it was for me to come home to darkness. (We did the class anyway, just by candlelight and with only the bravest few.) We hoped power would be back up by morning, but that was not to be. We woke up to learn most of our area was in a blackout. More than a million people were without power. And it was COLD. Inside my house was about 55 degrees when we woke up, but it was easily 20 degrees colder outside.

My neighbor and I took our kids up to the mall where there was power, but nothing on our way up to the mall did. It was like that was the lone grid with power in a sea of darkness. Then my neighbor talked to her husband who is a lineman for Qwest. They were told not to expect power back to our area for 3-6 days! And then came the weather forecast that predicted snow!

But we were one of the lucky ones. My neighbor was able to tell the power company exactly where the tree hit that knocked out our particular area, and when we were coming home we saw two power trucks pull over right at that spot! About 2 hours later, my lights (and heat!) came on!! I can't tell you how excited we were. My kids were dancing around and cheering the lights, and I was saying a heartfelt prayer of thanks.

My power did flicker a couple of times, and even went off completely for about 5 seconds at one point (when I was attempting this blog the first time). But we've been fine ever since. And we are lucky. At church yesterday we learned that there are still many people in our ward without power, and the majority of the ward got their power back Sunday morning. So it has been a cold, long weekend for many. I am grateful we got our heat back so quickly. 24 hours without power was an adventure. Much more than that would have been pretty miserable.

But it's still COLD!