Here is Ashley's version of last week.
Thank you to all those who reached out in concern for us this week. We are alive & well, including the cats, the bunny, and the fish Its been a rough week here in Texas but I’m grateful for all those who worked endlessly to help restore power, the firefighters, the first responders, the helpers, etc. I saw friends and family coming together to help each other out, and a community of love and concern for each other. I’ve had limited internet/cell service and when I have had it, I was trying to check in with friends and family and find ways to help. We are very fortunate and continue to pray for those who are still without power or who have suffered in other ways.
Monday, woke up to several inches of pure delight. We lived in Utah for 7 years so it’s nothing new to us but it’s very rare for Texas! We scrounged up what snow gear we still have and headed out to play. We didn’t have WiFi, so work couldn’t really be done, we couldn’t drive anywhere so we enjoyed the day together. Had a nice hot breakfast, waffles, (I rarely cook breakfast these days). I did a million loads of laundry and got to the bottom of the barrel which turned out being so nice since the next few days would be without power. We also cleaned a lot, played games, and I listened to an audio book which I highly recommend to everyone. Everyone needs to read it!! It’s alarming. More on that another day... It’s not just another parenting book trust me. It was the perfect way to go into this week where we’d be with our kids, in our house all week. Free of work, activities, peers, internet, social connections, and the world. I gladly welcomed this opportunity to reconnect with our kids and reevaluate some of our everyday “priorities” . I couldn’t stop listening to this audio book because it was hitting home in every way, explaining the rise of bullying, youth suicide rates, the dilemma of social media, the impact it’s having on our rising generation, all of it so I was doing all this with an ear bud in my ear knowing that my kids deserved my full attention but they also deserved what I was learning. The book is 12 hours or so long and I finished it by Tuesday
I’m still trying to journal about last week so I’m on Tuesday...
We woke up and did school as usual and around 1 pm the power went out. Luckily, my parents still had power so they invited us over for dinner and to sleep if we wanted to. It was quite a debate because Jaden wanted to stay home to keep his fish alive. At this point, he would need to manually pump air into the tanks every two hours and boil water to keep the fish water warm enough. The sudden drop in temp would shock them. Hazel was all about sleeping over with cousins at grandmas so she wanted to go and stay the whole time. Hailey wanted to go for dinner and then come home and “camp out” in our media room all together. We settled on going for dinner, leaving Hazel there and the rest of us camping out. It wasn’t terrible. Jaden did a lot of work to boil water, fill water bottles and add to his fish tanks to keep the water temp around 80 degrees round the clock and pump air into the tanks. Cody (one of the cats) got under covers with us, he makes a great little heater. Nova was a little less enthused about cuddling and seemed to have high anxiety, unable to settle down and sleep much. We enjoyed doing a puzzle at my parents house. It was nice to all work together to come up with decent meals with what we each had on hand. I just can’t believe my parents had power the whole week and that they just barely moved within 20 min of us. This made the whole week so much better. Such a tender mercy! Their old house, we found out, didn’t have much power the whole week. But my parents had enough time to move to this new house, get unpacked and Daniel finished new floors in time for all this to happen. Such a blessing because they were now housing us during the day, my sister and her family, and my brother in laws mom who was visiting and got stuck here most the week!
Wednesday...
We decided to take the fish to my parents house. We enjoyed the day there. It was nice to charge devices, have internet, check in with as many people as we could, try to enjoy the time with those we were presently with, watch the news, look at family photo albums (I love that my mom is pretty great at making physical photo albums), kids loved playing with their cousins, and at night we came back to our house to check on the cats and make sure everything at home was okay. This time Mason wanted to stay the night at Grandmas so it was down to Daniel, Jaden, Hailey and I “camping” at our house (I think it was about 50 degrees in the house by now) but it was fun to have some deep conversations, play games and watch a pre-downloaded episode of “The Pack”. We love this show! I was feeling super grateful we had a gas stove and water all week. No pipes froze. We were able to cook a few things on the stove and always had hot water. Taking a hot shower never felt so good!
Thursday...
Spent all day at my parents. Kids had fun playing in the snow with cousins. Sam’s mom taught Hailey how to make homemade bread. We completed the hardest puzzle ever. Had some deep thoughts about puzzles and life...
Sometimes you need to shift your position, look at new pieces of the puzzle for a bit. Sometimes you need to find a place of rest from the constant searching and longing to belong. I hope, as parents, we can be that place of rest for our kids. I think often we keep trying to put the same piece in the wrong place. It takes a lot of eyes to solve one puzzle. A village. One who sees our kids strengths when we struggle to. I’m grateful for our village. Here close and afar. It’s important to encourage each other in every success, every piece placed. It’d be so silly to shame someone for not figuring out a part of the puzzle. At times we almost lose our minds and another fresh set of people and eyes steps in. Those who have the same goal as us, to complete the puzzle.
Thanks to having a Vivint app, we can monitor the thermostat while we are away and it came on which meant we now had power at home! Woohoo!! It was 54 degrees. We came home to a leaking dishwasher but no damage done, just water all over the kitchen floor. Everyone showered, did some quick restoring of order in the house, got all our beds back to their places, & slept in our warm, cozy home again. Threw out most of what was in our fridge and freezer that went bad. (Gratefully it wasn’t as bad because we were always taking food to my parents house to make or store in their fridge/freezer.) Counting our blessings. I needed to clean it out very badly anyway. Glad I was forced to.
Friday...
Daniel had a few works calls and met his CFO for lunch. I think I went to scout out some stores to see what I could find. Seeing the empty shelves was sad I was able to get a few things we needed but nothing fresh, no milk, no meat, no produce. I don’t remember what else happened this day. Pretty sure we had family movie night. Hailey enjoyed seeing one of her friends again. They took some fun photos for the back of their business cards. These two are little entrepreneurs
(I grabbed a few pics that I didn't already have... and posted the "snowgirl" pic again- because I love it.)
