Whoa!

Ok, so the last 7 days have been C.R.A.Z.Y. around here!! Last Monday night, we had some sleet/freezing rain. It covered the roads, but it wasn't too bad. I woke up Tuesday morning, and came to work (well, my husband drove me to work!), and I carried on like normal for the most part. My parents power went out around 6:30 that morning, but I still didn't give it much thought. The news kept talking about the "winter storm 2009" that was heading our way, but they are seldomly on target with their forecast, so I didn't think much of it. I left work about 3:30 Tuesday afternoon, and when we got home, our power was out. It made several attempts to come back on over the next few hours, and around 8:30, it came back on. Yay!! But not for long! It stayed on til about 10:30, and then went off again, and this time it wasn't playing around!! It was so quiet in our house, and all you could hear were the ice covered branches cracking and hitting the ground. They would hit our roof with so much force that I was sure they were coming through. We got up the next morning and not much had changed, except for the number of trees in our yard. We went the whole day without power, which sucked, and then, around 10 pm, our power came back on!!! It turns out that, because we are so close to Walmart and the mall area, we are on what is considered an "emergency circuit". We are in the first group that they try to fix, because people need to get to emergency supplies, etc. I have never been so happy to live so close to walmart in all my life!! Well, here we are a week later, and there is so much devastation in our town. People are still without power (including my parents), and some without water. I have never seen anything like it. Our town literally looks like a war zone. Trees are down EVERYWHERE. People were fighting at gas stations, and waiting in lines for up to 3 hours just to get gas at one of the few stations open for several days. It was madness. I am so impressed with our emergency service workers. They have been on top of the situation from day 1, and although there is often not much they can do, they try there best to keep people updated on the things. I found out yesterday that between the fire department, police department and national guard, they will be knocking on EVERY door in our town to make sure everyone inside is ok. They are passing out meals and water to people. I can't imagine being in there position, but I think they are all awesome.

Well, on a different note, I have officially lost 10 lbs since January 5th. Woo-hoo!! (the "power -outage diet" helped a little!!) I'm pretty proud of myself that I have stuck with it. I'm not exactly known for my will power or follow-through!! I'm glad to be getting back to normal. I'm going grocery shopping tonight, so hopefully tomorrow I will be posting my menu.

Please keep our town in your prayers...there is still so many people that are in pretty bad shape. Tonight is supposed to be the coldest night so far, with windchills below 0. Some of the people who have been ok so far are going to be finding it harder to stay warm tonight.