34 Long Hours

On Friday night, following a day of 100 degree heat, a strong storm blew through the area. The storm was categorized as a 'land hurricane' or derecho. Strong winds (+60mph) and a lot of lightening downed trees and wires in it's path. At least a half million people in Maryland alone were without power. We were included...for 34 hours.

I went to bed early to try to make up some sleep from the night before when Mia was up several more times than normal. I remember waking up at some point and hearing rain hitting the bedroom window and thinking, that's weird, I didn't think Kurt was going to water the lawn tonight. This in itself doesn't make sense because our bedroom is in the back of the house, and I can't hear the sprinkler at the front of the house when it's on. At 11pm, Kurt woke  me to tell me the power was out and he put a flashlight on my nightstand. We fell asleep thinking that the power would be back on in the morning. It wasn't.

We made sure all the shades were drawn and went out for breakfast. We saw someone in a neighboring subdivision and they told us they had power. We were positive that our power would be restored that morning. Panera was packed with people without power. Emma enjoyed a chocolate chip bagel (or donut as she calls them). We tried to get online but the wi-fi was out. We walked around Target for a bit, which had minimal lighting and no air conditioning (there was still residual coolness). Emma liked playing in the toy section.

We spent some time at home. Poor Emma kept asking to watch TV. She kept using longer and more polite sentences thinking we would let her then. Finally, we let her use the remote so that she saw that the tv really didn't work. In the afternoon, we went to Michelle, John, and Natalie's house. They already planned an open house for the afternoon, and we were grateful they didn't mind us hanging out until 830 that evening. Emma and Natalie had so much fun jumping on a bed, getting chased by John, playing in the sprinkler, kiddie pool and getting squirted with the hose!

We had heard power would be restored by 830 and headed home then. Unfortunately we were still in the dark...and heat. Luckily the basement was about 75 degrees, so we had a family slumber party. Sunday morning, we went to Panera again for breakfast. The wi-fi was working by this point and we were able to get online. We were excited to see that word on the Facebook street was that we had regained power! We quickly returned home and Kurt made sure that the house did have power before we unloaded the girls.

Emma was so excited. She walked into the house and jumped up and down and shouted "TV! TV! TV!" She watched a couple episodes Rugrats while we straightened up and got laundry started.

We definitely would have been able to handle no electricity but it was the lack of air conditioning combined with the intense heat that was debilitating! We're not looking forward to trash night tonight since we'll have to empty out our fridges and freezers :(

All in all though, we're very lucky. A great number of people are STILL without power 3 days later and who knows when it will be restored. We are also very grateful that we have wonderful friends who offered up their houses to us during the time we were without power.