1 week later- - - - -

Well, what a week. Considering we were all caught by surprise, I think my family did pretty well.

Food storage and emergency kits are not our strong point, but everything came out fine in the end. Our power came back on late Tuesday afternoon, but we could have held out longer. The longer the outage, the easier it was for our family. Boring, yes- but in a sense, easier. One night the kids slept in the tent out in the back yard. That was fun, until the wood chippers/tree trimmers came along and woke them up (at 8am). We got used to taking the flashlight into the rooms (bathrooms) which had no windows. We were able to clean out the garage (finally) because there just wasn't anything else to do. Thank heavens the weather was fabulous!

I went back to work on Tuesday. I doubt I'll get paid for Monday even though our store in Kenwood didn't have power until late in the day. The tri-county store didn't have power until Wednesday. School started back for all the kids on Thursday. Madeline said only half of the students returned on Thursday. There is still whole residential areas without power. Sis Rice (some of you know her- she was in the RS Stake) lives in a neighborhood across from Whittaker school. Most of that area is still without power. Katy's family in Indian Hill is still without power, too. They might not get it back until early in the week. Of course, the neighbors of Katy's family said that was just fine with them, they'll just take a little vacation in the mean time. Wouldn't that be nice? Then again, sitting in the back yard with the kids, just chillin' and watching them all play together was a pretty nice vacation too.

By Monday night ice was scarce, the Kroger was open, but only on half power. So Bari called around and found a store that still had ice. We picked up 20 bags and knocked on doors in the neighborhood and gave them away. That was probably the most unusual Family Night service project we had ever done. The kids really had a blast giving away the ice.

We learned a couple of valuable lessons. Get better prepared for one. We did pretty well. I need more candles and fresh batteries. The big lanterns were easy to find, but it would have been nice to have individual flashlights for each of the kids (I think we did at one point, but they've all gotten broken or lost). We did ok with the food. We hadn't done any big shopping for the week, so there wasn't much in the freezer to worry about. The first night was peanut butter and jelly, and then we started grilling. The supply of briquettes was good, but now I will probably want to keep a back-up bag, too. We have a couple of camping lanterns that need a little maintenance, that now needs to be a priority. Other than that, more crackers in the pantry, and cans of fruit, something that can be eaten cold, would be good. Like I said, we got through it all without any real problems, and with a few reminders thrown in.