Twain Harte: Power Out

We had said that no children were going to come to cabin. This was to give the parents a real break. But someone snuck into our midst.

And there he is!! Mr. Blaik couldn't be dropped off at his babysitter, because of all the snow and route change. So he came along for the adventure. And I must say I LOVED having him there. I had not yet formally met him, just seen and talked to him over skype.

Do you notice that little headlamp he is sporting. Does this tell you anything about what happened next at the cabin. That is right...the power went out. Our first morning there the snow damaged the power lines. When we could make it out of the cabin we would see the power trucks out trying desperately to fix the lines, before the next snow storm hit us. We even saw one of the truck being towed out of town.

I forgot the mention that because of a lack of winter tires on cars we all stuffed ourselves in 2 or 3 cars to get anywhere. We hardly used to car we had rented.

It was a bit strange to come home from dinner to a dark cabin with no power. We bought flashlights, headlamps and lanturn and just them to get anywhere during the night.
We kept the curtains closed, so keep the heat in. We had this one fireplace and a propane heater to keep the whole cabin warm, while the power was our for almost 3 days straight. We even tried cooking on it. Yes, in that paper bowl is a peep. We were told that when you heat them up they expand, so we tried it. Yes, they do. Mandi bought those popcorn things you heat over the fire. She and Jared decided to heat it up. It was HILARIOUS!!!! That smoke is coming from a bit of paper that Mandi had left on it. It caught fire. The popcorn get a bit charred, but Mandi ate it anyway. And even better, a great memory was made. Since x-box was out, the men spent some bonding time playing poker...with Rook cards and no money. Mom's request. They got quite competitive and had so much fun. I think Sean won the most. Rachel became our Firewoman. She made it her responsibility to keep that fire going. No one else could do it quite like her and she would fix it when others didn't do it quite right. I had bought these "tights" as a joke for Blaik. Since our houses are much colder here in the winter, the kids wear these to help stay warm. They come in all different styles and colors. Mandi had laughed that I always had Hyrum in them when we would talk on skype. So I got some to bring to here.

On our first morning, I was awake before anyone else and just sitting upstairs in the dark. I heard Blaik awake and talking to himself. So I got him up (I think he was confused by this, but didn't object) and noticed that due to last minutes traveling changes he didn't have on warm enough clothes. I thought this was great way for me to surprise Mandi with his gift. I got him all dressed in his strumpfhosen, as they are called here, and waited for Mandi to wake up. When Mandi noticed what he was wearing she thought it was hilarious and laughed out loud. They actually came in really handy and we all were grateful for them.

Because of the lack of heating this is how we spent a lot of our time, wrapped up in blankets and talking. We all loved that there were no computers, tv's or x-boxs going. It really was a blessing to not have any power. It added to the adventure and gave us more time to just focus on each other. It would not have been the same experience with power...of course this also made calling our babysitter (Rike) bit harder. The cell phone towers were out also. We had to drive down to the next town for reception. It took a couple days to figure out that the phone in the cabin was working.