We just thought 2020 was weird, but 2021 has come in with a bang itself! Thursday, February 12 we started with a late start day at school due to ice and snow that ironically didn't begin until 10am when late start school begins. As the day went on it got worse and worse leaving me with about 4 kids at the end of the day still at school. Nothing like a bunch of teachers having to scrape their way into their cars at the end of the day just to get home. It was great to see random strangers, husbands, and coworkers scraping peoples cars off and helping people home in all the ice.
Needless to say school was canceled on Friday postponing the Valentine's party's until the next week (or so we thought). Long story short we missed the whole next week of school do to a record breaking 200+ hours of below freezing weather, snow, ice and massive blackouts across the entire state of Texas. We lost electricity Sunday morning around 2 am and did not get electricity again until Wednesday night around 7pm. 64 hours of no electricity! We are so very thankful to have a gas fireplace and gas stove still allowing us to stay warm in the living room and cook on the stove top. We had no hot water so no baths, and the bedrooms were about 45-50* but we were much better off than most with no gas. Oddly it became just "normal" and we began to play board games, read, play card games and truly enjoy just spending time the 4 of us. (Not that I want to do it again!) We pulled Marley's mattress into the living room and all slept in front of the fireplace which we have all said we actually kind of miss now.
The one truly amazing thing that came out of all of this was the massive bonding and outpouring of love and generosity in our community. People were offering their homes for heat and baths if they had electricity, they offered to wash random peoples clothes, bring firewood and groceries, etc. It was truly amazing!
Sometimes I feel like God allows these things to happen to slow us all down, look inward and see the good in all of us.
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