Around 2am on February 15th our power went out. We weren't overly concerned at first because we'd been told to expect rolling blackouts. However after a while we were concerned. While we had two periods of 45 minutes of power in the middle the power finally permanently came back on 60 hours later at 2 pm. on the 17th.
In the meantime we stayed warm with lots of layers and our gas fireplace. The kids all slept together in Timothy's room under lots of blankets. They were super sad that we wouldn't let them go play out in the fresh new layer of snow, but with no way to warm back up again later we didn't want to risk it. The temperature outside was in the single digits. In our house the lowest it got, according to the meat thermometer we used to check, was 43 degrees. It was pretty brisk.
On Tuesday we went over to Gma and Gpa Cole's house to shower, since they never lost power, but we came home pretty quickly since we wanted to be home in the event that the power came back on and the pipes burst. On Wednesday we went over to Aunt Lana and Uncle Tutu's house to warm up and play with the baby chicks who had chosen the coldest days of the decade to hatch. The kids and Collin also had an intense Nerf battle that got them so warmed up they were down to shorts and t-shirts for a while. Honestly the kids seemed more bothered by being bored and not being allowed to play in the snow than they were by the lack of electricity and cold.
Unfortunately what we had feared would happen did happen. At about 7pm on Wednesday Eliza got up from the table to go to the bathroom. She yelled for us to come over because it sounded like it was raining in our bedroom. Collin and I raced and opened the bedroom door to discover sheets of water cascading from the ceiling and 2 inches of standing water on the carpet.
We had a brigade of neighbors, ward members, and family at our house as soon as they could get here with shop vacs and towels. The water was turned off at the street. The carpet was ripped out of the bedroom and closet. Our furniture got moved out to the front of the house along with closet contents that couldn't risk getting wet. In the melee I slipped on the water and hurt my hand badly. We were afraid that it was broken but a trip to the ER the next day revealed that it wasn't (although as I type this 7 months later my hand still hurts).
At one point Collin and Matthew were up in the attic cleaning up water logged insulation in an attempt to relieve the soaking ceiling of the extra weight. Gpa Cole was below cleaning up water in the master bathroom. He heard a crack and jumped into the closet just as a whole panel of soggy sheetrock crashed down where he had been standing only a moment before. After that everybody cleared out of the attic and master area to leave the rest of the clean up for the professionals.
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