Total Chaos: Houston, we have a problem . . .

Well we did anyway, its all better now. We were without power for about 12 hours today. The awake hours, that is. It went out between 8 and 8:30 am and came back on around 9pm. Wow, that was an experience.

I do want to Thank Uncle C and Margarita Queen for opening up their house to us, since they did have power, however, after four days of parties. I was ready to stay home today. So we toughed it out.

It got down to a balmy 61 degrees in our house before Papa borrowed a generator and got us back some heat around 4:30 pm. A big thank you shout out to Joe, he made my day and inadvertently my coffee! Of course, we ran out and tried to buy a generator, but like most of the other 117,000 people around here who lost power today, only the early bird gets the worm. Papa says we going to get a generator when the stores are stocked again, but he has said that everytime we have lost power, so we'll see what happens.

I definitely got some use out of my new robes today. I seemed to be the only one troubled by the cold in our house. I dressed the boys warm but they didn't seem to mind how cold it got. Well, I take that back, they both shrieked at my cold hands when it came time to change a diaper or help snap and zip up their blue jeans. A little curious, I felt their hands and they were warm. So how do their hands stay so warm and mine our freezing? It wasn't long after the generator was going and the house was up to 67 degrees and Bub had already taken off his sweatshirt and was sitting on the couch bare chested, he was "too hot". Geez, wish I had that problem.

It was amazing to see how much the boys and I rely on the TV though, kind of sad. They kept asking to watch this or that and I kept wishing I could just snap it on to entertain them so I could get a little piece and quiet. To say we had some major quality time together would be an understatement today. As bad as I make it sound, we really rather enjoyed the day. We read all the new books they got for Christmas. Two of them several times (the Transformer book and the Mickey Mouse Look & Find books were a hit). We (rather I) put together some puzzles. The 100 piece one was a little hard for Bub, soon after we separated the edge pieces from the rest, I was on my own. Bub got some major GameBoy time today, the new games he got for Christmas and Birthday presents were a big lifesaver. Thanks Aunt Scooby.

There were a couple of challenging times. Like when I was using the bathroom and they found the stash of mini snickers up in the cupboard. I don't know how many they had before I caught them, but Shyguy was climbing the walls for about an hour after that. Bub fully understood the whole, we have no power thing, and that we couldn't watch TV. Shyguy did not understand and insistently asked for Dora, Diego, Alvin & Chipmunks and CARS all day. Don't get me wrong, they don't normally watch TV all day long, but Shyguy usually gets in a Dora episode each day and maybe a Diego or a movie. Bub was more content with the whole no TV thing. He had his GameBoy and loved reading books on the couch with Mama under the covers to keep warm and the puzzles we did together. We even went through a whole pack of the Brain Quest cards they got for Chistmas, I was amazed at all the ones he knew!

I was only able to get about a half cup of coffee in before the power went off. And in the initial hustle of getting things situated without power, all the coffee cooled down to the point I would not drink it. That lead to a rather nagging headache for me most of the day. A headache along with trying to keep Shyguy entertained most of the day was wearing a little, ok alot, on Mama today, so once the generator got going the TV's came on and the coffee pot was a'brewing! I honestly don't know which made me happier.

Another interesting note: I washed the dishes today, manually. I haven't had to do that in quite some time, well, other than the occasional pan too big for the dishwasher or the one or two that do not fit due to having too many dirty dishes, but I actually found it quite relaxing. Maybe because Papa was left to entertain the electricity deprived kiddos at the time.

Anyway, I'll leave you with some Christmas time cuteness . . .