Atlas day 1

Friday October 4th was the beginning of the worst fall storm our area has seen in decades. I'm not sure on the actual numbers, but it was bad. A couple inches of cold rain soaked everything and all the livestock. Then the snow started falling with 50 mph winds with gusts up to 70 mph. Tens of thousands of cows died. I still feel heartbroken about it, especially when I think of the Bible Camp Terry attended when he was young. They called the storm "Atlas." 

Rapid City got about two feet of snow. We were thankful it was already daddy's day off and he didn't have to even try to go to work. The day started out not that bad, but it just kept snowing and snowing and snowing! It was very heavy, wet snow. 

This was first thing in that morning

It was such a cold, icky day that I decided to make a hot lunch - soup - which I don't usually do. However, as soon as I finished, the power went off and stayed off. It was nice to have something hot for the time being. The house started to cool off right away and Terry started a fire. I bundled Ezra in another footed pajama, a hat and slippers.

Since we had no tv or internet, Terry thought he might as well start work on the new bedroom - where the school room had been. It was his plan for that day anyway. However, it was not as bright as it appeared down there though. Notice Terry's headlamp?

Had to bust out my candles.

Standing up the framing.

Once the framing was done Terry started demolishing the stupid wet bar. That's where the closet will go.

He's an animal.

Noah and Evie got a chance to demo also :)

My mom and sister in law gave me the idea of cooking in foil packets over the grill. I had some thawed chicken in the no-longer-powered fridge which I used up. Terry had quite a bit of digging to do to even get to the grill.

It was A LOT darker. It was wonderful to have hot food. The house was nearly 50 degrees everywhere except the fireplace room the next level down. The highest level, the bedrooms, were so cold. Our fireplace is extremely inefficient, but we were thankful for it even though we had a limited wood supply. Terry had to hike through the drifts to use his chainsaw to cut apart a large fallen tree limb that had been sitting for a year.

I was really worried about Ezra for the night. We moved a pack and play to the basement since it was warmer down there since the ground wasn't frozen yet. It was pretty decent down there. And ironically, Ezra slept the very best of anyone on that cold, cold night. 

I wanted to put the kids to bed early but Terry had the good idea of camping with them in front of the fireplace for the night. Since they didn't get to go during the summer. It was a good idea, but no one slept very well. Noah went to the basement. Evie went to her bedroom around 5am. I could not sleep on the couch in the basement so I went upstairs and froze. By the next morning, I was feeling pretty done with the whole power outage thing. I was cranky. I did not handle it so well. I was so very thankful when it came back on late the next morning...