Icepocalypse 2012

Right on the heels of the huge (for here) snowstorm there came an ice storm. The power went out for a huge number of people.  Sub-freezing temperatures. Suddenly, things changed.  Gone is the fun-no-school-let's-play type of feeling.  Changed to a "this is serious" type of feeling.

We kick into high gear.  Two kids get the job of keeping the good water (pottable, drinking/ cooking/ washing dishes water) and bad water (gray water, flushing toilet water) bowls full of snow to melt.  2 kids are assigned the job of keeping wood in the house to feed our hungry stove.  One kid winds the radio to hear the weather or music to keep us entertained.  And we rotate.

At night we did a lot of reading.  I read most of Fablehaven #1 to the kids.  And they each had their books they were reading.

At night, to ease the darkness and fears, we gave each kid two glow stick bracelets.  It worked like a charm.  No one was scared to go to the bathroom or to bed.

I braided the girls' hair (at least the ones that were long enough) in hopes that we could go until the power went on to wash hair.  Though we did do our best to get everyone's hair washed for church.

Elijah gets radio duty.

This saved our day!

We rented this portapotty, prematurely.  Long before workers actually came to our property.  However it was perfect to use during the day.  Then we just have to use buckets of water to flush the toilets at night when kids (and adult, for that matter) don't want to go out in the cold and dark.

Power was off for 144 hours.  (Of course just short of the 150 limit before you get a $50 credit on your phone bill).  And was on for 6 hours then went off again.  We all prepared to  hunker down for the long haul but it was on the next day.  It would go off this way 3 more times before it was back on permanently (at least until the next storm ;( ).