It's A Wonderful Life!: Back to normal after the Ice Storm of 2009!

Wow, what a week it's been! And my family is so glad that it's over! The Monday before last, I dropped Emma off at preschool and everyone was talking about the upcoming ice storm that was supposed to hit our area that night. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect how bad it would end up being! Monday evening the snow and ice started falling. What made the storm so dangerous was that the ice kept falling all day Tuesday! Some of our friends and family lost power Tuesday evening around dinner. We lost power around 5:30 Wednesday morning. I knew the minute it went out...I looked out our window and the whole subdivison was black! Oh great! I went back to sleep, and when we all got up around 8 we not only had lost power, but we had no water! What were we supposed to do without water or power? With 2 small kids? Our first thought was to head down to Nashville to stay with my sister, so I started packing our stuff. But by the time we made the decision to walk out the door, the power came back on. It was off for about 8 hours, and believe me, we were very fortunate to have it back on that fast. So that was a relief. Our cable and water was still out, but the most important thing was having power so that we could stay warm! So we made do with bottle water. I even collected some snow and ice from outside to melt, just so that we could flush our toilets! GROSS! But our water was out for 24 hours, so when we woke up Thursday morning it was back! We had a boil water advisory for 4 days, and that was just lifted on Monday! Mike's company, Humana, was closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and he took off Thursday. And on Friday when he went back, he was reading about the storm on the internet, and 80% of our county still did not have power. Again, we were very blessed to get it back so quickly! Some of our family and friends were not so fortunate, but made do with generators and kerosene heaters. My parent's power was restored yesterday, and my sister and her family is still waiting for theirs to be restored. What a mess!! We have had family members coming to our house for hot showers and warm beds, and yesterday my mom and sister came up to do some laundry.

We did manage to have a little fun on Wednesday, after our power was restored. The kids had fun sledding--it went super fast on ice-covered snow! However, the sled ended up breaking, oops! Guess it wasn't meant to use on ice. Oh well! I really hope it doesn't snow anymore anyways!

Yesterday was my 33rd birthday--and the best present I received (except for the beautiful necklace Emma made me), was that our cable and internet started working again after 8 days!!!!!!!!! Woo Hoo! Mike brought a cake, so he, I and the kids had pizza and cake. They sung happy birthday to me and gave me my cards. And Mike is going to take me shopping this weekend for my present.

Enjoy the pics!