<<This post is a really long narrative—consider yourself warned>>

The power went out at 10:00 PM on Thursday night.  Zach and I were just finishing up our version of date night (a snack and a show after putting the kids to bed).  The power blinked off, then on and off again.  We checked on the kids, put nightlights in their rooms, gathered our flashlights, and went to bed.  

Several times during the night I found myself sensing barely perceptible cramps and wondering if I would go into labor really early.  It occurred to me that my detailed 7 pages of instructions were in an online document on my computer and I’d have no way to print them for a babysitter who’d have to come watch my kids in a house with no power.  A few times in the night I heard the cracking and falling of tree branches in the forest behind us.

Ila woke up extra early, not long after 5 am.  I might have left her in her crib to cry until a more decent hour, but with the power out, I took pity on her.  She didn’t want to cuddle on the couch with me.  She wanted to eat and watch a movie.  I had to set her at the table with a flashlight, but she was mad because she wanted toast and I couldn’t find anything that she’d eat.  she just cried and cried.  It was a rather miserable morning.  Nicole also got up early, but she happily ate her dry cereal by flashlight. 

All the kids were up before the sun was fully up and enjoyed playing flashlight games in the living room.  They made shadows on the ceiling and pretended to be afraid of the monsters that they created.  The snow was already melting and it made eerie sounds as it fell from the towering branches in the backyard.  Periodically  there’d be a crack and a branch would topple down through the trees.  

I received a call in the morning that my glasses were finally in.  I started to become very anxious to go get them as my current glasses had been broken for months and were driving me a little crazy.  This desire to go out might have been compounded a little by the fact that we had just spent several days snowed in the house together and we currently had no power. 

The snow had been melting and dripping all morning so I thought that surely the roads would be ok to venture out.   We decided to all go out as a family and perhaps have a hot lunch somewhere.  We loaded all the kids in the car, manually lifted the garage door and attempted to venture out.  Our street was still a sheet of ice with melted snow and some slush on top.  We couldn’t get the van to move forward.  We tried reversing a little to get some momentum, but we couldn’t seem to get ourselves moving forward and after reversing ourselves all the way down to the bottom of the cul-de-sac, we were hopelessly stuck.  We had to abandon our van at the bottom of the hill and trudge back up the the house through the ice and snow.  This was the low point of the day for me.  I didn’t realize how strong my desire was to get out of the house and take a break from the stress and fear I felt about our power outage, until I discovered that I couldn’t leave. 

We had sandwiches for lunch and then I got out board games for the kids.  They spent several hours happily playing all together. Knowing that it would get dark around 4:30 PM, I started to prepare for an evening with limited light.  I had the kids clean up all the games.  We made sure all the toys were picked up off the floor in each of the rooms and gathered all the flashlights and checked their batteries.

The snow and ice had been melting quickly and Zach ventured out to retrieve the van from the bottom of the hill.  He managed to get the van up to the driveway and agreed to try one more time to go out as a family.  This time we were successful.  We left at about 4:30 as it was starting to get darker.  I was able to get my glasses.  We drove to a little Mexican restaurant that was not far from our house and had a nice meal as a family.  It was so refreshing to take a break from the cold and dark of our powerless house.  (I overheard that the restaurant’s power had only come back on 3 hours ago).

We drove back home to our dark house and helped the kids put on their PJs.  It was now about 6:00 PM.  We gathered around our flashlights and read our scriptures and had prayer a bit early. 

The kids were happy to each have their own lights.  Nicole had a string of battery powered Christmas lights, Ila had a little lantern light, Isaac had a flashlight, and Charlotte had a headlamp.  

As I read a story to the children, Zach attempted to set up a movie with our portable DVD player.  Unfortunately, it didn’t have enough of a charge to play a movie.  

I took the girls upstairs and started settling them into bed.  I made up a silly story about three sisters who liked to play tricks involving bananas on their brother and then read some books to them.  Zach read to Isaac from “The Great Brain” series.   As we were reading, I noticed that the Christmas lights in the girl’s room had turned on and it occurred to me that they were powered by electricity.  I felt a great sense of relief and joy when I realized that our power was back. The power came on at about 7:00 PM.

Our Friday night tradition is to give the kids a movie night where we make them beds on the playroom floor and let them watch movies until they fall asleep.  Everyone was particularly overjoyed to celebrate our power returning by making our playroom beds and having movie night!

I feel incredibly blessed to have had such a short outage.  Many of our neighbors and friends have been without power for several days and continue to be without power even now.  

After church today, I made some buttermilk scones.  The kids counted down the minutes until they were done baking and then raved about how delicious they were.  Isaac said that they were so good that he thought that they might help someone without power feel better.  We talked about the people that we knew that were out of power and he became very excited about the idea of bringing them to his primary teacher.  So we filled a container with some hot ham and bean soup, gathered up some scones and some raspberry syrup, and drove over to his primary teacher’s house.  Isaac and Charlotte really enjoyed giving their teacher and her family the food and walking around their property to see all the trees and branches that had fallen over.  I was glad to have a thoughtful son and to have had the opportunity to nurture his desire to serve others.

I’m not the best photographer, nor do I have a super fancy camera, but I think you can get the idea from these pictures.

Mostly since I have my own laminator, but also because the kids seem to lose money easily and I didn’t want to worry about always having the right amount of change and bills on hand, I made some fake money and laminated it:This system has worked better than I expected.  Isaac has been doing chores before and after school.  He has done the littler everyday, vacuumed the living room everyday, unloaded the dishwasher, emptied all the trashcans, cleaned toilets, picked-up toys, removed all the couch cushions and vacuumed the couch and done his homework right away without even being asked!  I am loving the extra help, especially since I’m slowing down as this pregnancy progresses.  He has earned a little more than $10.00 and couldn’t be happier.  He even turned down an offer to go to work with his dad tomorrow because he wants to stay home and do chores!

We had a nice birthday celebration with just the 6 of us.  We started the day off with a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and Orange Julius.  We spent most of the day at home, but went out for lunch as a family at a little Mexican restaurant not far from our house.

I made his favorite cookies (pumpkin-raisin), and 7-layer bean dip.He opened presentswith an audience:Instead of cake, we had cookies:And just for fun, we used re-lighting candles–the kids loved it:

Here’s another little nativity flashback (2008):

I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile.  As many of you know, we’ve taken Nicole in for some testing through the school district.

Nicole is an energetic, friendly, creative little girl.  She speaks clearly with good articulation and good sentence structure.  She likes things that most little girls her age seem to like and she plays well independently.  Of all our children, she is the most outgoing and friendly.  It can be a little unnerving how easily she allows unfamiliar adults to pick her up and hug her.  Many of our friends were surprised to hear that we suspected that something was not completely normal about her.

The tricky part is clearly defining our concern.  Zach and I discussed for months whether we thought that maybe she has an issue/disability or is within the range of normal.  Luckily for us, the school district is required by law to provide free testing for any 3 year old whose parents request it (there is testing for younger children through early intervention as well).

Her problems seem to lie primarily in the area of language comprehension.  I say seems to, because it is hard to know what someone else comprehends.  This problem is most clearly demonstrated in a question/answer situation.  She does not respond to most questions in a typical way.  It’s almost as if she doesn’t understand questions or that she doesn’t understand that a question requires an answer.  She does not answer even the most basic questions like “what is your name” or “how old are you.”  When you ask her a question she often repeats part or all of the question or gives you a confused look and doesn’t respond at all.  This problem was very clear in the testing situation because asking questions was their primary means of trying to evaluate what she knows.  By the end of the first screening test, my concern had increased because I could see that if something didn’t change, she would have a lot of difficulty in a school setting.  The official testing placed her at a 28 month level for comprehension which is more than a year behind her age.

She also has difficulty following verbal instructions.  In a group setting if a request is made of the group, she will wait until the other kids respond and watch how they respond before responding in a like manner.  She does not seem to understand unfamiliar requests without some sort of visual que.  I say unfamiliar because there are some routine requests that she can do on her own such as put on her shoes or sit in her seat.  An unfamiliar request can be as simple as “point to the purple block” or “stack the blocks.”  I observed her in a group where she was asked to circle a snowman.  She knows what a snowman is and she can draw a circle, but she didn’t respond to the directive until she looked over and saw a peer circling a snowman.

For a long time, we had a hard time getting her to understand discipline.  She would cry when we raised our voices at any of the children as if we were yelling at her, yet she would smile and laugh or just look confused if we scolded her.  It was as if we were speaking a different language, she often seemed to be trying to interpret our tone or facial expression more than our words.  We finally had a break-through in discipline when we spanked her.  She soon learned that if we said the word spank, then she needed to stop what she was doing.

I’ve also noticed that when she gets emotional, she seems to lose the ability to comprehend.  She would understand and respond appropriately if I asked her to go get dressed, but if I yelled at her to get dressed she would seem flustered and confused and just cry.

Sometimes she’s just odd.  The other night we had some people over for family night.  In the group were some adults that she was a little familiar with and some adults that I don’t think she had ever met or interacted with before.  She climbed on each guest’s lap, but only stayed for 2 seconds before moving on to the next adult.  Then she hugged each guest’s knees.  After hugging knees, she went around the room and felt their hands and announced whether they had warm hands or cold hands.  Then she started stroking their shoes.  She made no distinction between the adult she had spent some time with and the adults that she had never met.

Her social interactions with other children primarily consist of parallel play or copying what they do.  She will play a cooperative game with Charlotte, but generally Charlotte directs the game and tells Nicole what role to play and what to do.  

The results of her testing are that she qualifies for services under the classification of communication disorder and she will start 45 minute therapy sessions once a week at the school in January.  I will be interested to see how she responds to these sessions.