What a week!

JD headed to London last Monday and I was facing a week alone with the kids. The week started out well, and I was looking forward to a MOPS planning meeting and our couples Bible study on Tuesday as well as a new Bible study at church on Wednesday morning. Then, I started paying attention to the weather forecast and knew that I would probably have a day or two at home with all the kids as snow was on the horizon. On Tuesday, JD and I discussed changing his flight home on Thursday because of the weather forecast and flight schedules available. We were concerned that the plane he was taking home from London on Thurs. afternoon wouldn't be able to take off the afternoon before from here due to the pending snow. I'm SO glad we were on top of that. He was able to change his flight and get home on time. The flight he was originally scheduled for ended up getting canceled because the airplane couldn't take off from Dulles on Wed. night.

We woke up on Wed. morning with a wintry mix and school was canceled, so we read some books, solved some puzzles, and watched a little TV. It was really a yucky day outside.


Around 4:00 that afternoon the rain/freezing rain changed to snow. It started coming down fast and the flakes were huge.


I had a feeling we would lose power because the snow was so heavy. I called JD and had him talk me through working the fireplace; I gathered up the flashlights; I brought up sleeping bags from the basement. At around 6:15, we saw a green flash, heard a loud pop, and the house went dark. Every 10 minutes or so, we would hear another pop and see another green flash as tree limbs crashed into power lines, blowing transformers all around us. It was a little creepy, and I was a bit intimidated without JD being at home. Thankfully, my cell phone was fully charged, so I had some contact with the outside world. It took me a while to get the fire going because the wood was damp from the snow. Isabel was also very interested in the fire, and I had to give Madelyn the job of keeping Isabel away from the fireplace. I decided I would try to make an adventure of it and have a sleep over/camp out around the fireplace. Madelyn and Pierce were really into that but Isabel was not interested at all. I finally felt confident that the fire was going to burn, and by this point, Isabel had dozed, woken up and decided that she was all done with the camp out.

So, I bundled her up in two pairs of footed pajamas and her snow bibs, covered her up in a fleece blanket, and put her upstairs in her crib. In the meantime, the touchpad of my cell phone froze, so I could receive calls and make and receive texts, but I could not call out. I was a little nervous about this but notified my sister-in-law and a friend and asked them to call and check in at different points and to also check for text messages from time to time. I think I slept a total of about 2 hours the entire night as I kept seeing the flashing lights of transformers and hearing the scraping of snow plows, and making sure the fire was going, and making sure the kids weren't freezing and were in their sleeping bags. At three, I turned my cell phone on and nearly cried with relief when I saw a text from JD saying that he was on the plane and it was leaving as scheduled and that his original flight had been canceled.

At seven the older kids were awake, and I went outside to start shoveling the driveway. Madelyn was in charge of watching the fire and Pierce was in charge of listening for Isabel. I was able to shovel the entire driveway before Isabel woke up. After breakfast, I got the kids all bundled up and we went outside to play and finish shoveling.





I took Isabel over to our dear neighbors' house, and they were excited to watch her while I shoveled and helped the other two kids make a snowman. JD walked in the door at 12:57. We were all so happy and relieved. We were also excited when he told us that the power company was in the neighborhood. The power came on at 12:59.