World without Electricity

Well, we're proof that you don't have to live on the coast line to suffer the effects of a Hurricane. Late last Sunday afternoon, Hurricane Ike winds swept through Northeast Ohio at gusts of 80 mph. What started as a beautiful Sabbath morning ended with trees and branches snapping like twigs landing in yards, on homes, on powerlines, in streets, on cars, and leaving millions of people in the dark. Little did the Ohio Edison electric company realize that there nice act of kindness in sending 30 crews down to Texas to aid those hurricane victims would come back to haunt them. Now, if you're prepared not having power is a completely livable situation....but add to that having a well and septic system....no power = no water. Yep, you guessed it - our new house has just that...a well and a septic system. We lost our power/water at a little after 6PM on Sunday night and finally had it restored on Thursday. All schools were closed on Monday so it made for a very long day of 3 kids without modern day conveniences. Now, I do realize how lucky we are to have not lost our home or our loved ones like many in Texas, but this was quite the trial for our family. After a couple of days of holding it and running to the Grocery store to relieve ourselves we finally figured out much water and how hard to pour it to get gravity in aiding us to self flush our toilet. We also did homework by flashlight and had story time on the porch because it was lighter outside than inside. We had several kind ward members (the outage was very splotchy) who allowed us to bathe in their homes and do our laundry. We were eventually able to borrow a generator on day 3 that we plugged into our deep freeze so that we wouldn't have to throw away a freezer full of food. I could go into so much more detail, but I wanted to say what a wake-up call this has been for our family. In no means were we completely unprepared for this situation, but we definitely were not prepared enough!!! Here's just a little advice to those wanting some. Now, there's obviously a lot more you should have than what I've listed, but I've had several people ask me what we needed/used the most in this particular situation so here goes:

1. WATER (having just moved to our home with a well 2 weeks ago - we were not prepared enough in this category).

2. EXTRA BATTERIES for flashlights (so happy that we buy ours in bulk at Costco).

3. CORDED TELEPHONE (cordless phones are convenient, but don't work in a power outage).

4. ICE CHEST (we have a huge ice chest and this allowed us to transfer food from our fridge).

5. ICE (to use for the above).

6. CHARGED CELL PHONES (get your phones fully charged everyday).

7. GAS CANS & EXTENSION CORDS (so that if you get lucky enough to borrow a generator - you can power it).


About midway through our "adventure," my mischievous little ones got bored when they were done painting stumps and trees etc... and decided to redecorate the front door. Thank goodness for washable paint!

Near the end of the week I found every opportunity to just not go home (I was getting very discouraged and a wee bit depressed). So, I loaded up Brady and Ellie and we headed 30 miles to an outlet mall I've always wanted to check out. I was able to pick up a couple of random things for the kids so they have what they need this Winter at rock bottom prices. To top it all off they had a train that goes through the courtyards of the stores, out into a pasture, by a lake etc... It was $3 for unlimited rides so my kids were on their best behavior in each store so that they could take another train ride. Brady loved waving to all the people and checking out the view.