Snowmaggedon

This is a few weeks overdue. But still deserves a posting!

We have survived our second natural disaster in the seven years of being Texans! What are the odds, right? 

So, was it as bad as they say it was? 

Yes, yes it was. But we are fine now.

Low points included: 

Monday, when our power clicked off at 2:30am and...never came back! We think our cell tower was connected or the service was overloaded, because we were in a dead zone. No calls, no texts, no data, no internet and the roads were too frozen to go anywhere as the temperature slowly dropped. Still, we had hot water, a gas stove, and a fireplace that we kept going, so it could have been much worse. 

Tuesday, when we woke up to see that it was 42 degrees on our thermostat (colder in our rooms) and we still had no power! And then watching our water supply slowly diminish to barely a trickle. 

Wednesday, when I braved a trip to the store and found a long line of people waiting to get in (all dressed--no joke--in layers and layers of sweats, pajamas, and robes, like everyone had lost all hope or something) and empty shelves waiting inside. 

The good news is, we had plenty of water stored away and incomplete 72 hours kits sitting on our living room floor with lots of batteries, headlamps, lanterns, and hand warmers (love the hand warmers!). 

The boys also had a fabulous time! No water for showers or washing clothes (plus very few warm clothes) meant that they didn't even have to change their clothes for three days! We also had enough of a trickle that our toilet on the bottom floor would fill up (albeit very slowly) so we didn't have to use the "bucket-dumping" method. Derek got ahold of our hand crank radio and carried it around constantly, blasting any radio station he could find (including the 52 Spanish stations) and the fireplace made for some delicious s'mores, right from the (relative) comfort of our living room! Luke and Derek got to have a sleep over as they huddled together for warmth under eight thick blankets and Wes loved sleeping with his mom and dad. Thankfully, we also know someone who owns hundreds of boardgames, so the boys had plenty of offline entertainment on hand. And once the power finally came back on they thoroughly enjoyed using the "we have to watch shows now because they might turn back off!" excuse. 

And last, but not least, our pipes are miraculously all intact! 

Beautiful, beautiful intact plumbing. 

23 Month Wessers

 Wessers is almost two! And he is certainly embracing his little two-year-old self and bossing everyone around left and right. He has a whole bunch of words now, but very few consonants. Most of his words are all vowels (very accurate vowels!), especially at the beginning, with the exception of important words like "nano" (popcorn), "bipey" (diaper), and "new dues" (new shoes). Everything else kind of sounds like this: "Ahm, Uke, ya-ya, ach ows nano ereo owl?" (Mom, Luke Derek watch shows popcorn cereal bowl?) But we usually get it. 

One of his favorite new things to do is "it ya-ya" (hit Derek) and then say he's sorry. He comes in and gives a nice big hug and kiss and then makes a sad noise, kind of like "awwwww". And then gets a little gleam in his eye and a little smirk on his face and goes right back at it. Biting has also become more commonplace than we prefer. Poor Luke and Ya-ya. 

The poor little guy wants so badly to be like his older brothers! He crashes all of their soccer practices and messes with all of their toys and steals all of their balls and water bottles and food and for the most part the two handle it quite well! It's so fun watching the three of them learn how to get along and be brothers. My favorites (Ken's least favorites) are their noisy dog piles and wrestling matches. 

He'll grow up soon enough!