Herricane Irene with the Family

No, I didn't misspell Hurricane, but only wrote it the way Breanne understood hurricanes.  As we braced ourselves for the ensuing storm, Breanne commented that the hurricane must be a girl since it was a her icane without knowing it was named Irene.  I really think Breanne is onto something here.  Maybe we should call the ones that are girls hurricanes and the boy ones hisicanes.  It makes pretty good sense to me! 

Honestly, Saturday was a little disappointing.  It rained a lot, but the winds only got to about 30-40 mph during the day.  With all the hype, Breanne was often asking if the hurricane was here yet, but the storm seemed to delay.  Following a night of TV and videogames, Lauren and I decided to turn in at around 11 which is right about the time the real fun started.  At 11:30, the lights went out leaving us in the dark, and beginning a long spell of time without power.  I will admit, I was a little jealous we got the brunt of the storm in the middle of the night as I could hear the winds blowing very hard and would have liked to see it (and even been on my back patio to see it). 

When we awoke, the power was still out and there was a little excitement as we looked outside.  Since we couldn't have coffee, I ventured out in search of a place that had power so Lauren and I would be ready for our day.  It wasn't until I entered Howard County that I actually found a place with power and coffee!  By early afternoon, the novelty had worn off as the recording from BGE was telling us we may be without power until Friday and it was only Sunday.  We were refraining from opening the refrigerator unless absolutely necessary and I fired up the grill to eat whatever might go bad. 

By Monday morning, it was definitely not fun.  School was canceled (the first day of school this year) so I was home to help out, but the water bottles we froze to keep important stuff cold were almost thawed out and it was the end of most of the stuff still in the frig.  Fortunately the eggs had kept cold with the water bottles.  Seeing that this was our last chance to eat them, I fired up the grill and for the first time, I barbecued eggs.

The day went on with a lot of reading and playing outside (a very nice side effect of no power), but the kids were in need of baths and the sun was setting.  Lauren figured out, if you hang a flash light by it's string in the bath tub you have enough light to see to get clean.

This night was suppose to be the Circle Drive Fantasy Football Draft, but with no power and several people trying to draft online it was called off.  This didn't stop Josh, Joe, and I from hanging out and playing poker by candle light outside.  Notice Landry isn't present despite living in the neighborhood.  He couldn't take it anymore and headed to my parents where they had power!

 

 

Poker After Dark

Finally, at about 4:30 in the morning on Tuesday, I awoke to a bedroom completely alight.  I breathed a sigh of relief and fell back asleep.  The frig was empty, but I still had coffee!

You might think the rest of the week went grand, but it had it's ups and downs.  We lost power two more times, but never more than 12 hours (all the new food we got Tuesday didn't go bad).  However, the rescheduled Fantasy draft fell on a night we didn't have power, and the neighborhood crew drove all over before finally finding a McDonalds with wifi so we could complete our draft. 

Let's hope no more herricanes or hisicanes come anytime soon!