Power Outage! And other disasters...

AAACK! We came home from camping to find our power out. What a pain!!! On top of all the "post trip" stuff I had to do (including washing three huge loads of soaking wet, stinky clothes, but that's another story) I had to deal with trucking our food around to people who had working refrigerators!! Hey, we can't afford to just let our food go to waste, so in spite of the heat, clogged drains, and two crabby kids I had to haul over 70 pounds of food in coolers to my parents house. Of course, once I got there, I remembered that they have a generator that can power a fridge, a freezer and a couple lights. Yes, this is AFTER I haul all our food there. Argh. Oh well, at least we didn't lose our groceries!!

As for why our clothes were soaking wet, we were at the beach the last day of our camping trip with Sarah and Eric. Suddenly, the sky just gets black and it starts to thunder. Naturally, everyone starts grabbing their stuff and high-tailing it away from the lake. Then, the tornado siren goes off. FOR PETE'S SAKE! The last time we went camping here, a tornado hit. What's with that!??! We are scrambling to pick up our stuff, which is considerable. If anyone has ever taken two kids three and under to the beach, you realize the insane amount of junk they require. I can see the lightning over the water, and all I can think of is that scene in "Sweet Home Alabama" where the lightning strikes the sand. We finally all have armloads of stuff and start running for the car when the rain hits. Not just rain, sheets of water came rolling across and you were drenched in seconds. The wind was blowing so hard we could barely stand, not to mention hold all of our stuff AND the two girls. The rain was pelting my back, which was sunburned, and I thought, "Man, that rain really hurts!" I suddenly realized, it wasn't rain - it was hail. OUCH. Eric got pelted while trying to get our stuff into the car/trunk. Sarah and I huddled over Elianna while Chad tried to cover Selah and get the car unlocked at the same time. The whole time I am hoping/praying we don't either get struck by lightning or sucked up by a tornado. (And also, making a mental note to avoid this campground for future reference.) We finally all cram into the car, soaking it in the process, and wait until it lets up enough for us to run for the camper, which was, fortunately, in the same parking lot, since we were on our way home. We get inside, and I get the bright idea to throw our sopping wet clothes in with the dirty clothes, since I figured we could just wash it all when we get home... not realizing, of course, that that our power was out at home. So, you can imagine how nice THAT smelled.

Well, it all worked out. I took all our food AND stinky clothes to my mom's, and by the time I got all the clothes washed the power came back on at our house. We've had two more storms since, but nothing as severe and haven't lost power. Oh, and it blew most of the fabric off my garden, so now there are weeds galore back there.

Now, I have a messy house to clean, a garden to weed/repair, two parties to host, and a big, fat work assignment. So why am I blogging in these precious minutes my kids are napping? Good question. Guess I'd better get to work.