The power, the power... Who's got the Power?

Friday night as we were eating dinner our lights kept flickering on and off. Jonathan thought it was someone messing with their power, which was affecting ours. Then we realized it was really dark outside (around 7 or so) and to our surprise the sky was black and then it started raining... then lightning (and thunder of course) and then hail... Jonathan thought it was super cool and wanted to go outside to watch it, and I told him he couldn't. There was a tornado watch issued down in Wellston (about half hour away) and I wasn't about to have Jonathan be outside when something blew over. Surprisingly, I was quite nervous, I don't often get nervous in thunder storms. This one was the most intense one I have ever been through though. Thankfully the storm blew over fairly quickly, but it took our power with it (good thing that we already planned to play games that night). It was still light enough to play a few rounds of skip-bo (three to be exact, and I won two out of the three games... no biggy :) ) then we went to bed since it was too dark to do anything else. Side note: I got out our huge flash light only to realize that it was out of batteries... oops. The next morning we were expecting to wake up with power, nope. So we got the milk out of the fridge and hoped we could finish it off (but it was three quarters full, so needless to say we didn't finish it). We had planned to go up to Columbus anyway to go to the temple, it turned out to be perfect because Columbus had power, and food. We got food, then went to the temple. When we were driving home we decided that it would be better to stop at a fast food place and eat dinner and try to fill up (since we needed to start our fast) rather than try to scrounge around and eat cold, uncooked food. By the time we thought of this idea, all the restaurants were closed because there wasn't any power there either. So we ate at home, I ate enough food, and Jonathan said he did too.

The next morning we woke up and had power!! I don't think I have ever been so excited to see a light turn on with a flip of the switch! We got ready for church in luxury (with lights) and went to church to find that a good portion of the ward still didn't have power. As we were going to church we passed another church that had a sign up saying "Come cool off with us, we have the power". As I thought of that, I was grateful to know that we really do have "the power", the Power of God, and we don't need to fear.

When we got home our power was off again! That was disappointing. We did normal Sunday stuff, and then went to a friends house for dinner (we made half of it at their place), with two other families that were there without power as well. It was so nice to sit in an air conditioned home, and eat hot food! We played some games and had a good time.  As we were driving home, I was really hoping we had our power back on. I was starting to complain about how inconvenient it was to have to live without power. Then I rebuked myself and realized that of all the aftermath from a natural disaster (which this is) not having power is probably one of the best options to live without. We still had a safe place to live, with clean water (hot water even!), and we were protected from the elements. We weren't in need of any of the basic needs, we never even had to eat anything that was unpleasant. We also were protected during the storm, we didn't have a tree come through our window or crash into our walls.

As we have driven through Athens there are so many trees blown over, there's one that is super surprising, it's HUGE and it was pulled up from the roots, (just to give you an idea of how big it was, we saw some people taking pictures next to it, and the uprooted roots are taller than a full grown person, the trunk is probably around 4 feet thick).

Now we have power (obviously, since I'm on the internet) and we're so grateful! Our milk even stayed cold through all of this, and our frozen meat is still good. We are grateful for this wake-up call to get our 72 hour kits updated, and make sure we have enough food and supplies to be self reliant.