What a disaster area!!

Well we got hit pretty hard this past Saturday with a snow storm that I totally thought the meteorologist were hyping up. Last laugh was on me. It sucks, Adam measured that we got 16 inches of snow but the news reported we actually got 18 inches. It was such heavy snow coupled with all the leaves still on the trees and 50 mph wind gust it just became dangerous basically. There are down trees and power lines everywhere and it looks so much worse than after the Hurricane Irene up here.

We have been without power since 4pm on Saturday, cooking on a Coleman camping stove, trying to keep our food from going bad in our fridge & freezer, lighting our home with candles and sponge bathing. What a cramp. At least we have water since we are city water. Our homes are cold up here and there are shelters set up at the schools where there are generators if you need to seek that help. Luckily Adam just put in a wood stove in our fireplace early October so we are heating our home with wood and camping out in our living room. Our wood stove heats the house well with the blowing fan to push the heat around but there is no electricity for that so we have to all sleep in the living room to keep warm.

Eli is in his sleeping bag on the floor, Adam and I are on the sectional couch with our back aching as of now and little Bo has the best sleep in the house I think! He is in the pack n' play and getting a nice stream of heat off the wood stove so at least we are all warm.

It's these types of storms that make me realize how fragile our daily work/life system is. We couldn't do banking we needed to do yesterday because even lots of the branches for our banks don't even have power. I had to wait for 45 mins to get gas yesterday in a line only to find out they have premium only available at a hefty price of course. I was so worried with less than a quarter tank of gas that I paid for that premium gas happily! With sun setting so early it hard to get anything done when I left work yesterday I got home and had a 1/2 hr of daylight left and then we had to do our night routine all in the dark with candles. The boys luckily got a bath at daycare yesterday when they had power for a bit but they even lost power yesterday so now they are working off a generator. I have Bo with me at work today to make it easier since I can mix bottles here easier and all that. Eli is ok at daycare and the bigger kids all play together so he was better off there then at my work. At least my daycare burns wood in the fireplace to heat the house and they have a generator they are running some things with.

And who would have known I would be so happy to come to work! I got here yesterday and they have power, the town I work in is about a half hour from our area so they got hit but not as hard as us. So I have some normalcy while I am here, I can get online and I got to charge my cell phone up yesterday so that is super helpful. We don't have a land phone line either, that is down as well. Everyone is pitching in to help out each other where they can but it is just devastating to drive around or try to and see how many blocked roads there are and crazy power lines just hanging all over the place.

The storm was so bad they canceled Halloween over here, it will be re-scheduled when the kids can walk safely on sidewalks and power is restored. Just crazy. This all happened on October 29th! I hope this storm is no indication of what our winter will be like. Right now Connecticut Light and Power is telling us that Friday would be when we could possibly get power back but it could be longer. The way it looks I am not holding my breath...I haven't even seen them working on the lines at all they can't access them there is so much debris. But the National Guard is supposed to be helping out as of today so I hope that will make for a quicker restoration of power.

There is one big lesson to be learned for us over here. INVEST IN A GENERATOR!

Hope you are all doing well and are safe and warm where you are :)