Go out right now and buy D Batteries

Kevin and I were at the Bengals game on Sunday and were being beat by all sorts of trash that flew around the stadium because of a windstorm that we thought was just occurring within the confines of Paul Brown Stadium.

We soon learned the real story when heading back on 71 and seeing the damage that this weird storm laid out. Grandma was watching the boys while we were gone and said that they hadn't had electric since noon! We found all the candles, flashlights, and figured we better start making dinner with things from the freezer. Kevin and Grandpa were out in the back cleaning up all the debris. A huge branch landed in our garden, almost wiping out what's left of our tomato plants.

After a (non-romantic) candlelit dinner Grandma and Grandpa headed up North and we prepared for what I expected to be an overnight outage. When talking to my mom she said the news report on the radio was calling for power not to be restored until Friday. That seemed crazy to me. There wasn't even any rain!

We ate some ice cream, which was a delicious soup of cherry cordial by this point, Kev and the boys dragged sticks and branches to the curb, and we settled in for a long, dark night.
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This lasted until Tuesday evening. I don't have a whole lot to report in between then and now other than the fact that we really, really need to stock up on D batteries because you never know when you'll need them. These AAA and 9-volt don't help a whole lot when all your flashlights run on D.

We used a lot of candles and did a lot of staring at each other. Not so much of the last part. I think it helped that the boys were used to camping, so being without the "necessities" wasn't too big of a deal. Tuesday Lou & Ben's school was closed so we headed to my parents, who got their power back on Monday afternoon, to do some laundry (if Ben was going into school he was wearing pullups because no clean underwear was to be had...and I wasn't to the point where I was willing to hand-wash unmentionables). The boys loved watching TV all day while I ironed, washed, and checked my email.

As I type there are still a lot of people without power. A lot of people who have electric water heaters! We were so lucky to have a gas water heater and flushing toilets...can you imagine? Aunt Jill & Uncle Nick up in Dayton are still without. I'd send them a little shout-out of prayers that this ends soon, but they wouldn't be able to read it anyway.

O.K. Just pray that something like this doesn't happen again or else you'll be subjected to another long rambling of what happens in our household when the power goes out.

Not too big of mess...after Kev and Grandpa cleaned up! See the pile of debris they raked up back there in a pile. Good work, guys!