Trying to stay positive

We lost power Saturday night. It's Thursday near noon and still no power. Hoping soon.

We are fortunate in that we have town water and a gas cooktop, so we can still heat water and food (and make coffee with a french press) and flush the toilets without melting snow. However, we do not have an alternate heating source - no fire place or generator to warm the house. We stayed in our home Sunday night, but on Monday with no work crews nearby and the house cooling, we decided to pack up and head to my sisters house. If it were just Andy and I, we may have opted to stay home and just add a few layers. However after Sunday night trying to keep the kids warm enough (we each slept with one child), it was clear that we were going to need to be someplace warmer. Beth's room gets cold quickly (even at night) but she will not sleep in our bed or with blankets (and she doesn't sleep well if she's cold), so we knew we needed to do something. My sister got her power back late Sunday night, so on Monday we headed down. Then on Tuesday, we had to start thinking about our freezer stash. We had just recently picked up our meat CSA for the month and did not want to lose that. Again, we are fortunate to have friends with extra freezer space. I packed up the cooler and drove to a friends house with power and loaded her freezer. We kept the soups, which will thaw slowly in the cooler over the next few days and we'll just eat them up as we go.

I've stopped at home on both Tuesday and Wednesday to check on the house, pick up extra blankets/toys, toss or pack up food etc and the kids will not go into the house. Nora seems to be really struggling with the fact that our house has no heat or lighting, but she's happy to stay at Danielle's as long as we'll let her! Beth mostly just wants to go home.

On Sunday, we kept the kids busy with snowman building, pumpkin carving, coloring by candlelight more playing in the snow. They really enjoyed getting to play with glow sticks at night and it was a nice adventure. Monday was hectic because we were trying to pack up everything. I took the kids out to lunch (only the second time I've done that alone...I still just don't enjoy eating out with the two kids by myself, it's far too much stress). Tuesday, school was canceled so once I got the kids ready we ended up heading to a friends house for the afternoon. Nora was very quiet for most of the afternoon but perked up as soon as we returned to her aunt's house. Wednesday, we had Nora's tumbling class and then stopped at a toy store. The kids made tiara's and each picked out a game (they are both lots of fun!). Today, I can't convince Nora to get dressed, but she seems to be happy tearing apart Danielle's couch to make a fort and I just have very little energy left to stop her! I'm really hoping for a return to normal tomorrow. Nora has her first sports mania class in the morning - at 9am and I'm already worried about how to get her up and to the Y by 9am!

So anyway, I'm trying to remain positive and patient...but frustration and exhaustion are starting to win. I really want to sleep in my own bed, send Nora back to school and generally get back to our normal routine!