Happy Valentines Day...

Since today is the day to celebrate love, let me tell you about something that I really love...POWER! Last night was an adventure, to say the least. I went to the gym yesterday afternoon. It was lightly snowing when I went in and it was a complete white out when I came out. It took me about a half hour to drive the three miles to my house. When I got home, the power was out. This was about 4:30 in the afternoon. For the first few hours, we just hung out in the living room expecting the lights to come on any minute. But, they didn't and then it got really dark. We realized how totally unprepared we are for a major disaster. I had a couple of scented candles around the house, so we lit those for a little light. The temperature in the house was dropping by the minute. We spent a lot of time snuggled together in our bed, singing songs and reading stories with a flashlight. I was keeping my fingers crossed that the power would be on by 7:00 so I could watch American Idol. I was disappointed that I had to miss it! At 8:30 we were bored and cold, so we decided to set out on a little excursion in the minivan. We cranked up the heat and turned on "Jungle Book" for Lily. We drove down the street by Redwood Road and saw the traffic at a dead stop. We turned around and took some back streets to get out on SR-73. When we got there we saw a police car blocking the road out to Eagle Mountain. We were going the other way, so we didn't have any problems. When we got down to the Smith's parking lot we witnessed the pandemonium first hand. The police had shut down the only road out to Eagle Mountain and everyone was stranded. There were kids that were still stuck at school down the street because their parent's couldn't make it through the traffic to pick them up. And to add to the problem, the snowplows were stuck in the traffic too. So, there were tons of people with no where to go. The parking lot was packed! When we drove by Smith's we saw hundreds of people just standing inside waiting for the road to open. We went to Little Caesars and picked up a pizza for dinner. We really lucked out because we were able to circumvent all of the traffic and make it back home. We ended up sitting in the driveway for an hour, eating pizza and watching the movie. Bedtime came and there was still no power. We bundled up Lily and Owen and covered them in extra blankets. We all fell asleep at 10:00 pm. We think that the power finally kicked on at around 1 am. I was so happy to wake up this morning to the sound of the heater warming up the house! And I was so happy to flip the light switch and have the lights turn on! The whole experience made me realize how much I love power!

P.S. In addition to power, I also love Todd, Lily, and Owen!!