Power Out

Yesterday early evening I was standing in my kitchen feeding my kiddos a quick dinner before I planned to dash off to the Temple for a session with my sweetie.  Everything was going according to plan (always a plus when you're trying to get to the temple) when suddenly and without warning, the power went out.

You know what this is like when everything in your house shuts down.  Its like you can actually hear the energy get sucked into no man's land sssshhhhoooop.  Then a strange silence fills your ears.  You hear nothing, not even the familiar buzz of the refrigerator humming and certainly no lights buzzing or A/C running.  Immediately our collective heads shot to the windows. . .grey skies, wind.  Looks like a storms coming.

Well certainly if the light's weren't on in 30 mins we'd have to visit the Temple another night.  (I can't very well leave the children alone in the dark, sweating, A/C-less and TV-less, can I?)  The power had gone out about a week ago and took over an hour to come back on, but I was hopeful we'd still make it to our session.  After all, didn't the man directly across the street still have his TV running?  Yep, I could see it plainly though the window and everything.

To make the best of this bump in our road the kids and I headed outside to enjoy the wind and the rain.  It started pouring.  It was like a jubilation of rain out there!  MONSOON!

My 30 min mark came and went.  No power.  I bathed my rain soaked babies with the help of a headlamp and scented candle light.

Mr. Handsome came home an hour later from helping the Bishop.  No Power.

He said, "Let's get out of here!  Let's go somewhere with air."  Duh.  I hadn't thought of that.
I suggested a few places, "Golden Spoon, Sonic, Golden Spoon, A.J.'s Fine Foods, Golden Spoon"
"Didn't you just eat?" he asked.
I had to conceded that, yes, I did, but we're trying to make a bad situation fun here.  That calls for a TREAT and a cold one at that!

We loaded everybody up in the car and drove past Golden Spoon.  Guess what?  Their power was out, too!  What!  All that frozen goodness MELTING, just like were were!
So we headed over to Grandma's house which had air flowing and fans buzzing.  We hung out, the Mr. got an impromptu haircut and I made chocolate milk for the kids with Quick.  After calling some friends on our cell we learned that the power wasn't going to get back up and running until midnight!  By now it was 10p.m. and though Grandma had been scrambling to find mattresses and beds for all her grandkids in their time of need, Dad deemed we could go back home and rough it in our basement for 2 hours.  And besides. . .wouldn't the power likely come back on early?  Wouldn't SRP overestimate and then surprise us by getting it on by 10:30 or 11:00?

(Yha, we're sucker thinkers like that!)

On the way home the rain was still coming down hard.  The wind was blowing.  Our outside temp  registered 76 degrees.  76!  Was that's downright balmy for August in AZ!  Miss Sunshine and Bingley had zonked in the car so dad placed them gently in their own beds in their own room UPSTAIRS.  I found a spot for my girls downstairs and the boys opted for their upstairs room with the window open.  (Oh how they were missing having a fan in their faces!)

Being the good mama that I am, I explained to my sweetie that I needed to be upstairs by the kids.  An open window would have to do me good and under no circumstances would a basement be in my future if my kids were upstairs.  That's just the kind of mom I am.

Then at 12:30 in the morning I woke up with the groggy realization that I must have suddenly caught some sort of illness!  Certainly I must have a raging fever to be this warm inside my own house.  My temples were throbbing from the heat!  Miss Sunshine started to moan and whimper from down the hall.  Then J Man started grumbling, too.  The whole family was beset with this heat induced fever!
I went downstairs to check on my girls and realized it was likely 12 full degrees cooler down there.
And really, I didn't mean to tell this story in such detail!  But it was so ridiculously hot.  I wanted to take my blanket outside and sleep in the grass and I would have had I not been concerned about bugs crawling over my skin in the night (mosquito bites).  I convinced everyone to join me downstairs on the floor where it was much easier to fall back to sleep and I realized I didn't actually have a fever, just it was excruciatingly hot in my house without a hint of breeze to cool my sweaty skin.  So I did end up in the basement without my little ones.  It was so darn still and quite in my house that I could hear them turn over in their beds all the way from down in the basement.

Finally we fell back into a muggy, clothes clinging to us sleep.

Then at 1:45 the basement sprang to life.  Lights ON.  Fans ON. TV ON.  Mom (that's me) sprang from her resting place and turned off all the lights and the tv and back upstairs to check on the little ones (where the light was blaring in their rooms--but they took no notice--they were in a heat induced coma at this point).  

With the A/C now on and the fans blowing I still wished I'd had me the memories of a cool Golden Spoon treat lingering in my throat to soothe me into dream land.   But I did fall back asleep feeling mighty grateful for power!