Ok, I am totally behind with doing these posts, so just bear with me! I just wanted to post them for myself more than anything, so I have a record of what happened:) I am sure most of you heard about "Winter Blast '09" all over the weather channel the last week of January. Jonesboro just got ice, which created quite a mess of our little town to say the least!
Tons of people lost power, and some actually are still out. Praise the Lord we were only out for 36 hours and not 3-6 weeks like some have been. Those days were bad enough! Our cable went out about 6 pm on Tuesday night so we were not able to get any updates on what was coming our way. We lost power about 1am that morning, and the house got cold FAST. Tyson woke up about 3am crying because he was so cold. We put him in bed with us (which has only happened once before in his life), so of course he thought that it was a party! He played with our faces and said every word he knows and wiggled like crazy for over an hour. We all finally got to sleep a little after 4am, and were back up around 6 freezing. Silas got up and took off to scout out the damage around town, and came back and loaded us up. We found one of the only places up and running in town (McDonald's) and had breakfast. The line was forever long, but we had no time frame, so we didn't care. Then we drove around checking out the damage. It was pretty scary at times, because you would drive along a street with trees and power lines down all across it. At one point we went down a street and went under a huge tree with limbs hanging everywhere and I commented on how I didn't like the looks of that one. About 5 minutes later we were heading back the other way and sure enough, a huge part of that same tree had come down across the lane we had just been in. That is when we decided to pack it up and head back home. We spent the rest of the day by the fireplace, so things weren't too bad. We had our neighbors over later that night since they didn't even have a fireplace to keep warm. We made a party out of it and had a great time! We roasted hot dogs over the fire and then played cards for hours. Silas kept the fire stoked which kept our living room nice and cozy. Our friends left and we put Tyson to bed in his pack and play near the fireplace, and we slept on the fold out couch. The problem with sleeping was that the fire would go out, and then we would wake up freezing. Poor Silas got up almost every hour and re-made the fire for us. It was definitely a LONG night, but thank goodness Tyson slept right through it:) By Thursday morning the fun was starting to fade fast. Silas got up and went to work since his building had power. I got up with Tyson and we just sat there shivering by the fireplace in a blanket. After we looked at all his books and sang a bunch of songs, I was at a loss as to what to do with a toddler in a 40 degree house all day with no connection to the outside world. By this time I was really cold, exhausted from losing almost 2 nights of sleep, hungry for some warm food, and still feeling pretty sick pregnancy wise. And I was in desperate need of a hot shower more than anything! I packed up Tyson and we went to visit Silas at work where it was warm. I charged my cell phone while we were there, which helped. We decided not to try and survive another night at the house, mostly because we had run out of firewood and had no way to heat the house at all any more. I went home to pack our stuff, and when I pulled in I noticed the lights were on for the garage. I almost cried I was so relieved! The first thing I did was take a hot shower:) Life is so much better when you are clean and warm!! Then I took a nap:)
Ok, so that got really long. Anyway, the town is still recovering from all the damage. There are trees down everywhere and it has been a massive clean-up effort. They are still working to restore power to some of the outlying areas that were harder hit. Despite the tough few days, it was really nice to see people reaching out to others and doing what they could to help out. I felt like the town really handled things well and pulled together to make the best of the whole situation:)
These pictures aren't even from the ice storm. This was from earlier in the year when we had our first sleet/snow. Apparently we don't get a whole lot of snow here...just weird mixed precipitation! This stuff was really crazy to drive on, but Tyson had a ball sliding around the driveway with Silas:)
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