My Little Levy's: Icemaggedon 2013

On December 5th, I was abruptly awoken at 1 am to Piper screaming because her night light was out. I just thought the bulb had met it's maker and told her to go back to sleep but I noticed it felt different in our house. I tried turning on a light and nothing happened! This was when I realized NO POWER! When we went to bed at 11:30 that night we had power. Plus we were excited about waking up to no school, no work, and no schedule because the bad weather had already began. I was dreaming of a day in our pajamas and movies on the couch as mommy tried to catch up on everything! The house was a mess! But then the power went out and changed all those dreamy, idealistic plans! I got back in bed and woke Michael up to call the power company to report our outage! And, I looked across the street and could see the neighbor's power was working because their Christmas lights were brightly lit! The rest of the night I did not sleep well. I kept waking up thinking, "Oh no. What are we going to do to entertain the kids without electricity!" I know--such a first world problem! And, I kept waking up feeling colder and colder without the heat!

The kids finally awoke around 7 and all the white stuff you see is ice. No snow. Just ice. The first picture was our neighbors tree that split down the middle! The picture below is the only damage we had, which was a few limbs. Nothing major! Except the no power thing! Michael lit a fire and then went to check on some of our elderly neighbors. They were all too stubborn to come join us even though they had no electricity. Our neighbor next door is a widowed woman in her 80's. She didn't have a phone that worked either. So Michael had her call her family on his cell phone. Her family was without power too so she decided to stay put even though she had no fire or heat! We continued to check on her and so did some other neighbors. She ended up going to her family's home at some point!

We decided fairly soon that staying home wasn't going to be all that great. The heat coming from the fire didn't feel so warm throughout the house. I managed to light the stove top with a match and cooked sausage and toast on the skillet! But then our friends, the Wallace's invited us to their warm house! So we took them up on it! We joined them and another family, the Scott's for the entire day! It was crazy with 9 kids, two of which were babies under 6 months! But it was fun and we felt like we were in a cabin in the woods with our three families.

Nora & Piper

Briggs & Asher, Nora & Piper
It was actually Asher's third birthday on this day so it was fun that he and Briggs got to hang out even if Briggs was clueless about it! Ha!

Piper holding cutie pie baby Bennett!

What we thought would be just a few hours without power, turned out to be 3 days without power! So we ended up spending the night with Michael's brother's family and visiting friends during the day during this time. It was fun getting to hang out and socialize because that is right up my alley! However, I was beginning to feel a little crazy because I was behind on so much stuff and the house was ridiculously messy! So that was cluttering my thoughts throughout the time. By day 3, Michael and I were done and ready to be home. Even Piper wanted to be home! Thankfully our power was restored at 8 pm on the third day but we'd already put the kids to bed and the house was freezing so we spend one more night away and went home right after we woke up the next morning!