Ice Storm Aftermath

Here is how we spent our power-free days:

The first night we stayed at the Quality Inn. This night everything was sold out and, by chance, we got there right as their power came back on. The boys spent the evening "bed jumping" and luckily we had packed our DVD player as the cable was out. We planned to stay there again on Friday night, but while we were gone shopping during the day, they sold our room to someone else! So, Friday night, we slept in our dark, cold house...thinking we'd have power by morning. No such luck!

On Friday, since we had nothing else to do, we finished up our Christmas shopping. We dropped Clay's trumpet off for repair at Hames Music and then headed to the outlets. Later, we trekked through the mall, Wal-Mart, Target, Christian Supply, Sam's, and almost anywhere else with lights and heat. On Saturday, we visited with our friends Melissa and Tom who graciously let us use their hot water for showers and the kids were able to watch a little TV. Their power had been out, too, so we helped them clean out their fridge....Ron made us all omelets for breakfast. Then, we went to the movies to see The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.....The most AWESOME movie! Definitly one of my favorites. I typically hate movie versions of books, but this is by far the best I have ever seen. The movie really showed the allegorical features between the story and the Bible, especially the connection of Aslan and Jesus. If you haven't seen this yet, GO! That night, we found the last room available at the Comfort Suites down the road from our house before going to our Sunday School class Christmas party (see later post). The boys love the big room and we had a fridge and microwave for snacks. See above for more "bed jumping" by the boys.

We were woken up on Sunday morning by our neighbor letting us know that power was back on. After much celebration, he called back to say that it had gone back down. At this point, we were one of only 18 houses still dark in our neighborhood. We ran into a friend of mine from high school and her husband at the hotel. He's the manager of a movie theater and have us passes to go see Your, Mine and Ours (which was also really cute!) Then, back to the Comfort Inn for another night....in another room.....by now, nobody wanted to bed jump anymore. We just wanted to go home!

After 100 calls to Duke Power, we got our power back tonight....thanks to our neighbor, Monty. He stopped a DP supervisor and found out that they thought we had power and customer service had not sent out work orders for our 50 calls on Sunday alone! When I got home today the guy was out working and after dinner.....VOILA! Power again!