No Power? Uh, no problem?

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The only sound I could hear was the steady ticking of the clock on the wall. No hum of the refrigerator. No whirring of the A/C units outside. No buzz from the computer. It was just...quiet. Three candles cast a gentle glow reflected by the white walls. The flames danced and flickered, making it difficult to read without my eyes playing tricks. But there was a general feeling of peace and calm. Quite a contrast to the chaos outside: branches littering the ground, power lines lying across streets, trees split in half, and flashing yellow lights from utility trucks.

Living in the midwest, we have fear of bad thunder storms, some tornadoes, and, from experience last winter, some freak snow storms as well. You would never have been able to convince me that some of the worst damage done in Ohio would be from a hurricane! Hurricane Ike on the gulf of Texas didn't just do damage to Texas. The ferocious winds made their way north, up through Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana.

Sunday afternoon we were all napping when the power went out. We didn't think much of it. It happens on occasion, and usually comes back on after a few hours at the most. But this time, it didn't come back on. We called some friends to get an idea of how far the damage reached. As far as we knew, most of the city was without power, and my sister in Cincinnati was without power too. (We later found out that half a million people just in the Columbus area were without power.) We spent the evening with friends in the glow of candles and flashlights, with the kids trying to play with flames and shining flashlights in everyones eyes. We thought maybe the power would come back on in the night.

We woke up to sunlight, but a dark refrigerator.

The power was out until Tuesday night, 52 hours for us.

Throughout this time we reflected again and again on what tremendous blessings we had! I had no desire to complain, after I stopped worrying about all my food going bad.... It was a great time of reflection and peace. Here are the blessings that stand out most in my mind.

It does not require electricity to flush a toilet.

OSU still had power, so Eric was able to rescue most of our food by putting it in a fridge and freezer in his lab.

The weather was gorgeous! Cool temperatures and nice breezes. There couldn't have been a better time to not have A/C or heat. We were completely comfortable the whole time.

Our close friends have a gas water heater--hooray for a hot shower!

Our phone line is not through cable.

Jolie learned the word "hot" very quickly (the candles were never within reach after that).

We learned better what we want in our food storage.

It was actually a lot of fun to light the candles and flashlights and sit in bed together to read books to the girls. They went to bed so well, and we weren't distracted by movies or the computer to take our attention away from them (that, uh, didn't include books, though). Eric still got to go to work, but felt like he could also take some time to be with us and help out. We got to spend lots of time with some good friends which made the time go by a little faster.

Here are a couple of pictures from the last three days.

We enjoyed snacking on dry cereal and having candlelight dinners. :)


We had some quality family time.


Here's Eric making our breakfast of scrambled eggs on the propane burner.



And we were lucky enough to have Eric plug in the portable DVD player at school so the girls could still enjoy this:


It was kind of fun while it lasted, we learned some important things about ourselves, and we enjoyed the peace of a media-free two days. But, we're definitely very happy the power is back on! You can only eat so many peanut butter sandwiches in 52 hours.