Power

It's amazing how dependent our lives have become on having power.

Now don't go getting all in a tizzy. I'm talking about the electrical kind of power... lights, TV, radio, fridge, freezer, etc.

this pic is from a sunrise late last fall but it's the only one in quickly skimming that had anything even remotely related to electricity in it....

I could never be Amish. Or have lived 200 years ago.

Yipes.

Thankfully, our house has not lost power recently. We feel very blessed. But many in the Chicagoland area haven't been so lucky. Over 850,000 people lost power with extremely powerful storms Monday morning.

What a serious bummer!!

Our workplace was one such location. The power was off from Monday morning through late Tuesday afternoon. It happened while half the company was away at a big convention in Atlanta, which is a bit of a bummer just in the sense that many of us use this slower week to catch up & clean up! Albeit for the company's sake, it was probably best so as to not lose quite so much productivity....

Now obviously it happened for a reason though, and since we couldn't do anything about it nor could we do much work from home with all the systems down, I used the time to rest & refresh myself. My thinking was to take it as a blessing that God was allowing for me to get a much-needed break from all the intensity & stress, so that when we are back up & running fully, I am ready to hit it hard. I'm extremely thankful for the break!! It's been a nice couple of days.

Monday my friend Monica & son Parker came out to join me for a few hours while their power was out through the morning. It was a hot day so it was nice to provide them with good a/c and stuff for them to do.

Parker enjoyed hanging at and exploring my house, and showed me he's becoming a master at taking off his sandals all by himself!!

It's amazing how when you don't have kids you forget where things are until one comes along and finds things like a tape measure under your china cabinet... so Monica used it to figure out how tall he is. Not quite 2 years old and he's 38 inches tall!

Enjoying our time at Cabela's - not quite what I had pictured in my head, but little man is always full of surprises!

They built this store too large for the area - there were too many products that couldn't be sold based on the consumers around here, so they closed the 2nd floor except for the ability to walk around and look down on the animals. Parker loved having the freedom of running pretty freely up there!

His favorite thing was actually the airplane!

On to day two of no power at work... you know those parts of your house that are easy to forget even exist? Well, today I spent some time scrubbing some easy-to-forget-at-least-to-me parts of the house. Like backsplashes, the side of the fridge that faces the stove, the oven display, and the oven hood thingy.

Tim got me a nifty stocking stuffer a couple of years ago, and it's honestly just been sitting around. Today it finally came into really good use!

Oh man, it felt nice to get it scrubbed and cleannnnn!!!! I paced myself and it seemed like it worked just fine, but man am I sore now!

In the end, the last 2 days were wonderful days of relaxation, some work, and some cleaning. I'm really thankful for the break - as I needed it very badly! It is a shame to have missed the chance to catch up while others were away, but alas, it was meant to be and I am thankful.