Power Priorities

What a weekend! Friday evening we were hit with the craziest storm, which, thank goodness only resulted in a few downed limbs in our yard, but that we later learned was actually a microburst which caused severe damage to neighbors as close as a few hundred yards away. (The house in that picture is currently vacant, thank God!) Like most of the area we also lost power immediately following the storm.

While Nathaniel went to sleep and Abel and Lucas went for a walk to hunt for mud puddles and survey the damage, I enjoyed a quiet hour-or-so on sitting on our front stoop.

Then I got bored and hot and started wondering how long we'd be without power.

When Abel returned, I learned more about the many huge trees that had fallen and brought down power lines with them. And he announced that he'd better get out the generator.

I had COMPLETELY forgotten that we bought a generator after last year's hurricane!

Friday night it powered our sump pump (#1 priority!) and our refrigerator (#2 priority!). We spent a restless night trying to sleep in the heat and were all up very, very early Saturday morning.

And the question of the day was: would our party go on?

You see, we had planned a blowout summer bash for that afternoon, including rental of a bounce house from a mid-winter Groupon deal. But we still didn't have power. No worries, Abel was confident that since we didn't need the sump pump anymore, we'd have enough juice to run the refrigerator (new #1 priority!) and bounce house (new #2 priority!) via the generator.

And so by about 4pm we had loads of coolers full of ice and about 75 neighbors in our backyard enjoying plenty cold beverages, grilled and non-baked foods. Plus a bounce house full of joyous children.

And Karma rewarded us for forging on with the party anyway -- our power came back on about halfway through! Although some friends returned home to a lot of continued clean-up and hours (or days) more without power, we had a fabulous time with great near-by friends on Saturday. Proving once again, how grateful we are to live in such a wonderful neighborhood!


Original post by Smiling Mama. Thanks for reading!