Ice Storm 2007

You may be wondering where I've been? Well...we've been in the dark. In fact, Mike is still in the dark!

Last Monday (Dec. 10th) our area (and much of OK and KS) was hit was a massive ice storm. We lost power during the night on Monday night and it is still out to most of our county and a lot of central KS! We've been told not to expect power before Christmas! I'm soooo thankful that Mike installed a gas fireplace in our home last winter! We've been able to keep the house warm. It'll even keep Brody's room (upstairs) at 62 degrees!

Before the storm hit, we stored up water in everything that we could. When you live in the country and your power goes out, you also lose water. You need power to run the pressure tank which pulls water out of your well. So, we filled up the bathtub (so that we'd have water to flush the toilet) and put water in jugs and water bottles. We had NO CLUE that we'd be without power for this long! I think we thought a day or so at the most.

Our town is the only one in the county that has power restored to the residents living in town. The town that I work in is still totally blacked out. What makes matters worse is that last night into this morning we were hit with a big snow storm (6-12" predicted)! I'm sure this will push back the timeline of power restoration.

On Thursday we decided that I'd drive down to TX to leave Brody with Daddy Steve and Namaw. It's very hard to entertain a 16 month old in the dark night after night! Before the storm we had taught him how to blow out candles....so guess what he wanted to do every night!? So Brody and I drove to TX on Thursday. Since our town has power, Mike had to work on Friday.

I'm currently in TX until some time next week. The town I work in isn't expected to have power until towards the end of next week (if they're lucky). I'll drive back up to KS sometime next week so that I can do payroll (I'll have to get the computers from the rec and take them to Mike's office to have power to do it) and then Mike and I will come back down to spend Christmas with the family in TX.

Here are a few pictures that we took after the ice storm hit. I brought the camera with me, so Mike doesn't have anyway to take pictures of the snow for me :(

These are power lines by our house. This is why we still don't have power! Almost all of the lines were sagging towards the ground...many of the lines broke and some poles were snapped!

Even the grass didn't escape the wrath of the ice! This is our front yard! Look how much ice is around each individual blade of grass!
Here's one of our poor pine trees.
This tree is young enough that it's still flexible. We're hoping it'll survive. Many trees lost limbs. We even saw some trees that split right down the middle because of the weight of their limbs!
Looking towards the east.
Please pray for all of the people in our community that don't have a way of heating their homes right now. We'd also appreciate prayers that power restoration goes smoothly and faster than expected!