Ice Storm

Since it's been awhile since we posted I am adding a few pictures of life before the ice storm. Cam has been wanting a new TV for a LONG time, so when we saw this one on craigslist for $45 I got it for him for his birthday. Its not huge but it is a lot bigger than our old TV and is HD. Cam LOVES it.Aleksandra got some blocks for Christmas and LOVES to play with daddy. She loves to knock down all the huge towers he builds and he just keeps building towers...

Aleksandra is one wild little kid, everyday we find her in some new crazy place. Cam always tells her "you don't know karate but you know CRAZY...." its true.

Here is another project from my sewing machine, I used my leftover zebra fabric and made some burp cloths as a baby present. I thought they turned out pretty cute.

And then the power went out! Augh. Monday night we started getting a pretty bad ice storm and we were so excited that Cam might not have to go to school- oh if we only knew! We he didn't have to go to school- FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK! Our power went out Tuesday and we thought- what a fun adventure- we'll see how good our 72 hour kit is and just camp out. So here we are our first night with no power- all smiles.The ice just kept on coming. I ventured out and took some photos of the damage the first day.

My ironic photo- an icy power meter...Here we are that night more bundled up and a little less enthusiastic about it. Don't let the flash fool you this is what our living room really looked like by then...yeah... dark.Here we are the next morning, we all slept cozy in our bed that night with 5 blankets on or bed and bundled up. Getting out of bed was another story- it was pretty cold that morning.Cam boiled water over some candles to make us hot (warm) oatmeal, I thought he was a little crazy but it did raise everyone's spirits to have a hot breakfast. After breakfast we decided to go for a little drive to see the damage, we only drove near our house a lot of roads were closed due to damage.

Here is a little video of that day. Well to make a long story short, we spent the night at a friends house Wednesday and its a good thing we did, Cam and I came back to our apartment Thursday morning to grab a few things and it was between 35-40 degrees. That night our power came back on- HOORAY! However, people are still with out power and there are still branches down all around town. If nothing else we did learn a few things about our 72 hour kits. We were glad we had cash in our kits because we did find an open store but they were only taking cash- we just bought a few snacks for fun. We were also glad that we had glow sticks in our kit, they gave a lot of light and we didn't have to worry about Aleksa hurting her self on them. Our crank radio was a HUGE blessing- not only could we keep in touch with what was going on but we could listen to some music to lighten the mood. And last, always have at least half a tank of gas in your car- Cam filled up the night before the storm- we used the car for heat and the stations were all closed because of the power outage.

Now for the things we are going to add to our kit, we are going to add a big 100 hour candle to our kit- we had little candles but a big candle would have been easier. A little propane or something similar stove for heat and cooking. A sheet of plastic- our house may have stayed warmer if we had been able to seal our huge front window. A package of jiffy popcorn to cook over candles- we just thought popcorn wold be fun. And last but not least we saw the coolest thing in emergency essentials newsletter- its a crank phone charger- if our power had

been out longer we would have needed to charge our phones.