By that I meant we should not have to move out of the house because of the weather ,with two really little ones, and try to entertain 3 children without any electricity. There was some good that came of all of it and I will get to that in a little bit. However for those of you that have not heard it the story goes like this. On Sunday morning we got up for church and there had been a little ice fallen overnight. It was enough to cover all the trees and make for some really pretty landscape but the roads were fine and everything looked okay at the time. As we headed off to church then for the weekly trip to WalMart to fill all of our needs for the week we went home to find out there was no power at the house. We did not even take our stuff in the house we just ventured off to Chris' parents house to sit out the power outage there for a little while. A little while turned into staying the night there so we set up camp and went to sleep. As we woke up the next morning they too did not have any electricity, so our escape house had become just as our own house was. It did stay a little warmer in there than it was in our house so we decided to stick it out there during the storm until our house got back up. Going outside Monday morning was an eire feeling. There was no noise outside at all. Not the hustle and bustle of people going to work as most everything was closed because of loss of electricity. It was just quiet, calm and about every 45 seconds or so you could hear a large limb breaking
off. 
For a couple of days we had to continue to try to keep our routines as we still had jobs to go to, but we also still had children to take care of and a daycare that did not have electricity either. Stephanie watched the kids though, she has a fireplace in her house and I felt so bad for her having all those kids stuck in one room for the whole day as the fireplace only heats the one room comfortably, but I was also really grateful that she still took care of them because we still had to be at work so I am not sure what we would have done.
On Thursday Chris' parents got their power restored but we were not as lucky. We had to wait until Sunday to move back into our house, but we finally got to and it was great to get back to the routines for us and the kids. I did say that there was one good thing that came out of it and that is we realised that we could live without TV and since we have been home the TV has been off more than it was before. It is still on sometimes but not all the time. On Tuesday night this week I am not sure that it was on at all until late in the evening right before Chris and I went to bed I watched a little. It was really nice to take the time to talk to one another and entertain each other. Playing cards and memory with Micha, just having time to talk to Christine, playing with Logan and Caden. We all enjoyed the time and are going to set back 2-3 times a month that we have family time with no electronics and just enjoy each other.
On another sad note because of all the time we lost in a season that you can never have enough time we lost a lot of critical Christmas preparation time and something back out that I swore would not come back again......
For those that might not remember last year I accidentally got this 'Charlie Brown' tree that I swore that I would not put back up ever again, and here it sits in my living room. (See: http://fletcherfive.blogspot.com/2006/11/i-pulled-charile-brown.html ) We were going to get a real tree this year but with all that has happened and time running out till Christmas, this last weekend after getting back home I reluctantly went out to the shed and pulled the tree out while grumbling to myself, "Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you are the Charlie Browniest".
Merry Christmas and we will post more as Christmas come upon us.
