Power Outage

Monday, January 14th I woke up at 5:45 am when my alarm went off (as normal). But what wasn't normal was that my alarm clock read-out was black. No power. I guess my trusty alarm clock has a battery back-up (how nice) except in this instance it wasn't. I would have rather kept sleeping. We had no power. Which in Rexburg in the winter translates to no HEAT. It had been a VERY cold week. I think the temp that morning was -12. Eric and I immediately assumed it was going to be awhile before we had power so we jumped into action.

Funny, it never occurred to us to just get back in bed where it was warm.

We decided to turn on the gas fireplace in the living room and then hang a few blankets over the entryway to try to keep in the "warmth" and keep out the cold. But funny thing is...the fireplace didn't really produce much warmth. Sure if you sat within a foot or two of the flames, you could feel direct heat, but it never did heat the room. We brought in our indoor thermometer and the room measured about 55 degrees. It never got colder than that, but it never got warmer either. And oddly, the rest of the house did seem a bit warmer than that. Was the fireplace actually sucking the heat up the chimney? Possibly. We moved couches and chairs near the fireplace (at least it seemed warmer when you were looking at flames) and cuddled under all the blankets that we could find. We were still pretty chilly so Eric went and brought up the tent heater that we have in our camping stuff. That helped quite a bit.

We had some candles & flashlights for light. In all honesty it was more fun than scary, but it was a long, cold, and boring morning until the sun came up around 7:30. Then we could open the windows and use the sunlight for reading or playing games. The highlight of the morning for the kids was when we got the call that school was cancelled. They were thrilled. The power finally came back on around 9 am.

Renae (our sleeper-in-er) actually stayed in her nice warm bed -- sleeping -- until the whole thing was over. I think she had the right idea!!!

Eric had to head out to work shortly after, but the kids and I enjoyed a leisurely day of unscheduled relaxation and laziness. 

So all in all it was a fun adventure. But we learned a few things too. Most important of which is that we should probably invest in a REAL fireplace that produces heat...not just pretty flames.

Eric took these pictures. I thought he was trying to take a picture of me. 

But I think he had other purposes in mind. Notice his "baby" in the background. Nice.