11 days

Wow, 11 days is a long time to go without electricity!  We were very happy (an understatement) that our power came back on yesterday around 1 pm.  I had checked at 10 am and noon before and after a play date before heading back to my mom's to feed Steven lunch and put him down for a nap.  My mom had to go down the street to the mailbox so she checked again at 1:30 pm just to be sure and called me very excited that the back porch lights were on.  We had been told everyone in our neighborhood would have power by Monday (the day before) but there had been a few electric trucks on our street all morning so we were hoping our power would be fixed soon.  I dashed over to turn the AC on so it would cool down during the rest of Steven's nap.  What do you do when you haven't had electricity in your house for 11 days?  You rush back to plug everything back in and and crank up the AC!!!  We came back as soon as Steven woke up and have been enjoying (a cool) home sweet home ever since.  

Hurricane Ike definitely taught me a good lesson in contentment.  The first 7-8 days were actually fine- it's easy to be happy when you're still in your own home and Mother Nature is providing the AC.  But, Steven starting crashing on Friday and has not been happy about things not being normal-- when Steven's not happy, we're not happy.  The last two days have been hard with him but we have many, many reasons to be thankful.  Our friends and family have been so wonderful- we've had our pick of houses to escape to and meals cooked.  We retreated to College Station for the weekend to stay with my sister and brother-in-law, and then upon finding our house with no power still on Sunday night, we have been staying with my parents for the last few days.  We are doing well and are reminded of how much we have during a time when many in our area have literally lost everything- we are very blessed.  The plan for this week is to recover the house (go grocery shopping!!) and try to get things back to "normal" for Steven- poor little guy.  I think he already knows that things are better since we're home and I kept telling him that the house is cool and the lights were on- he went into his room and said "Steven's lights" so I think he knew something was different.  Last week he couldn't play in his room much even though we were home because it was so dark.  He was a little out-of-sorts the first hour we were home but then very happy by bed time.