We had a Halloween that we will never forget... or remember... because it was all in the dark! Before I tell about the storm here are some cute pictures.
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| Our Halloween Watermelons |
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| Yummy Dinner! |
The day before the storm we went to the Butterfly museum. It is amazing! Hundreds of butterflies of all colors. The girls had a great time!
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| A & E loved looking at the fish too. |
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| This butterfly landed right on Elena's head, but didn't stay long. |
Okay, now for the 'fun' part. On October 29 the forecast was 3-6 inches. We all laughed thinking it would only be a dust of snow. By 3:00 we already had several inches and we realized this was more serious than we thought. After all the snow we got last year this may not seem like a huge deal, but to have snow so early is completely different. Most of the trees had not lost their leaves and we are in New England where there are a LOT of trees. The snow was so heavy and the leaves held more than just the branches would have. This is what created the disaster. During the evening of the 29th branches and trees started falling EVERYWHERE! We are lucky and don't have any big trees near our house, but our friends went to bed hearing tree branches crack hoping nothing would fall on their houses. Our power went out about 8:00 pm so we were just finishing bedtime. Adriana was so excited to sleep with a flashlight.
We were hoping that it would only be a 1 or 2 day ordeal, but as we saw the damage just in our neighborhood we knew it would be awhile. Sunday we drove around to warm up and let the kids nap in the car and watch a movie. We went up to North Springfield where there was power some places and found a place to eat. Luckily we bought a small generator last year so we were able to use that to heat part of the house. We also had the snow to bury all the food from the fridge and freezer. (Silly me went shopping the day before and stocked up on things) Most of it was fine and we rotated the generator to warm the house or cool the fridge. Mark's office is in town so he got some free vacation days. lol. Lots of fun to spend it without power. We were amazed at how much we rely on electricity. No heat, lights, internet, TV, news.... that was the other interesting thing. There wasn't a good way to get information out so we were more clueless than our parents as they saw the damage on the news. We did have the radio in the car, but that's about it. I don't have all the numbers, but most of CT and parts of MA were without power for close to a week or more. In CT it was about 700,000 people.
We had some good family time. We went to the shelter at the middle school one day and the kids got hot coco and watched a movie. Halloween and trick-or-treating really didn't happen this year. We went up to Springfield (again) to a mall that had power and did trick-or-treating. I think everyone had the same idea so the kids got about 6 pieces of candy each. Just the right amount. We never lost our water and even had hot water. We got our power back on Wed. evening and were one of the lucky ones. Our neighbors across the street didn't get it back till Sat. night and some of our other friends didn't have it for 8-10 days! It was a growing experience for us.
Here are a few things we learned.
- Scented candles don't do a whole lot to light up a room
- Flashlights can light a room pretty well if you put it on its end
- Generators are amazing
- keep your cars mostly full of gas (gas lines were ridiculously long)
- The car heat and entertainment system are lifesavers
- You can keep the kids warm at night with 4 layers of PJs
- Keep a good amount of cash on hand
- Our empty 72 hour kits did us no good
- Our empty 72 hour kits did us no good
- We use electricity for everything!
From now on we are going to celebrate a Edison/Franklin Day on October 30. We are so indebted to them!
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| We were supposed to have a Halloween party the night of the storm so we got the kids dressed up and they trick-or-treated room to room in our house. |
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| This is what we woke up to on Sunday. |
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| Notice the banana leaves, most of them broke off. |
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| Halloween at the mall up in Mass! |
Here are some pictures of the damage. Not even the worst we saw. There were crews from Indiana to Florida helping with the clean up and power restoration. Thanks to all their hard work! After everything was cut and cleaned up, the streets were lined with branches needed to be taken away.
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| This is my favorite picture. Note the power line in the background. |
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| Crazy, crazy crazy! |
