Let there be light

ah the joys of suburban country living (I guess that's what you call where we live).

Early Saturday morning (5amish) the dark world became darker as Anna and I sitting in the playroom (yes we were awake at that ungodly hour) and the lights went out. It was the third time in a matter of minutes so I wasn't particularly concerned. Eme woke up (guess her night light going off woke her) and called for me. I stumbled through the darkness (boy is it really dark at 5 am during a rain storm!), and brought her into the playroom, where Anna was still sitting in the same spot not making a single peep. The we waited.
Eme: why can't you turn on the lights mommy?
Me: I explained power outage.
Anna:
Eme: why can't you turn on the lights mommy?
Me: simular response as before (though try to simplify)
Anna:
Eme: why can't you turn on the lights mommy?
...

(this conversation ensues for several more rounds, until we hear Paul and Grayson stirring, and see the tail tell flickering of a flashlight shinning through the windows)

Eme: what's that noise?
Me: daddy and Grayson.
Anna:
Eme: what's that noise?
Me: daddy and Grayson
Anna:

...

ah little did we know the rough start to our saturday morning was just the beginning. It is now Monday and power was finally restored around 6:30 p.m. - ironically less than an hour after Paul finally got the genrator hooked up to light up part of the house.

Well it was an adventure, and I found a whole new respect for frontier women. Thankfully we had water (after the first day and Paul managed to by-pass the pump), and we had gas to cook. And we have one phone that doesn't require electricity, so we could get updates from PG&E and find out that they had no idea when we would be back up online.

some of the livlier moments of our holiday weekend:

I bathed the kids one dark morning in the sink (using heated water from the stove (thankfully gas!!) but that ended quickly as Anna stood up, yelled “poop”. A quick shine of a flashlight in the water proved that she had indeed had a bm in the bath (her first!), and then we spent the rest of the heating water to sterilize and sponge of the kids.

The kids slowly coming to the realization of what works and doesn't work on electricity. What no videos? But hey mom what about the portable dvd player that we use on the plane (clever kid that Grayson)?

Paul and I sycronized (without any words) he at the back door myself at the front, opening and shutting trying to fan out all the smoke that was setting off all the fire alarms (on batteries)- while mom was using the opportunity to drill the kids on what to do in case of a fire. Our lovely antique fireplace (from France) looks magnificent but turns out back a couple hundred years ago they probably didn't worry so much about smoke getting into their house.

And one of the highlights was watching the kids hover around the newly plugged in (running on generator) lamp as though it were a new toy to behold.

Any way our adventure comes to an end and we were able to get the kids into a bath tonight, in the tub sans any extra stuff and with real hot water out of the water heater (it was one of the things that Paul thoughtfully hook up to the generator).

hope everyone had a happy safe new years!