On our last day of Christmas Break, at around 6:30pm the lights went out just as we heard a loud boom, they blinked back on, and then went off again with another boom.  The trees were whipping back and forth in the wind, and despite the buried power lines in our subdivision, enough of our grid is above ground that we’re still vulnerable.  We were downstairs playing with the boys at the time.  Their immediate reaction was to yell at us for turning out the lights.  We have a few nightlights that function as emergency lights, so I ran to grab those as Katie sat with the boys to keep them calm.  The boys ran over and tried the light switch several times, and then told me to fix it because it was broken.  <sigh>

After a few minutes we found a small collection of flashlights and a couple of lanterns.  One was a small child-friendly lantern (i.e., not particularly fragile), and another was a normal small camping lantern.  Guess which one Dexter screamed for?  He promised to be careful.  And in his defense, he was.  It lasted 30 seconds before he dropped it and broke it.

In the meantime I’d gone rummaging for more of our light-producing supplies.  Katie had grabbed our two big flashlights, but one was dead, so she said, “excuse me, I’ll be right back, I’m just going to go set this one to charging.”  Yup, still blonde, God bless her.  I went out to the garage and found the two mini-flashlights the boys got during our first trip to Michigan.  They’re very weak, but have little caps you put over them that project an image onto the wall, all from the Cars movie.  I also found two light sticks I’d bought as stocking stuffers a year or two ago.  So, we started playing by flashlight and glow stick.

Katie went upstairs to turn off a beeping monitor, and had entirely forgotten that Laura was there, only to jump and scream when she came across Laura standing quietly in Malina’s doorway.  Malina was out at the gym at the time.

We played with the flashlights for a while, before starting to get ready for bed.  The boys had been a little grumpy at first, but they were having fun with it after a few minutes.  We read stories by flash light, and then headed up to bed.  Usually there’s a small night light in their room, but since that wasn’t working we left their two glow sticks under their beds.  Now, the boys have a habit of demanding an extra drink of water after we’ve tucked them in, which we try to neutralize by placing their water bottles in their room.  So, whenever the boys want a drink they get out of bed (well, usually they wait in bed shouting our names until we come in and give them permission to get out of bed, no matter how many times we tell them to just get up and get a bloody drink whenever they need one), they walk over to their bookshelf, grab a water bottle, then step around the bookshelf and hold it up to the night light to make sure it’s the right color (i.e., theirs), before taking a drink.  Despite my repeated explanations that the night light wasn’t there, and holding the glow stick up to their water bottles to show them that I had indeed given them the correct bottles, they kept trying to show their water bottles to the outlet and getting really confused.  I’m assuming we had a gas leak that that’s why were weren’t all on the top of our game.

Eventually they went to bed.  Katie and I couldn’t figure out what to do with our time.  Everything on our to-do list requires electricity.  I “almost” just grabbed the laptop to watch a movie before we decided we could just give up and go to bed.  We weren’t sure what to do about Malina, so we put the two emergency nighlights on the stair way, and left one of the flashlights there so she’d see it when she got in.  As we were getting ready for bed I heard her return, and headed back downstairs to explain it to her (and tell her what to do in the morning if we still didn’t have power).  She was very confused, but finally clued in.  She then said that driving back to our house she’d been struck by how dark it was, and thought it amazing just how much brighter everything had been when everyone still had their Christmas Lights going, but now that they were off if it was just so dark!  And it was amazing that everyone turned them off on the same day, and that the street lights had been turned off, too.  Katie grabbed a flashlight and checked, but no, Malina hadn’t turned blonde.

We did a pretty good job shutting down the house.  We couldn’t do much to figure out if the 2-way or 3-way switches were on, but we got most of the rest of the stuff unplugged or turned off.  I heard Dexter flipping the switch on their reading light over and over again.  Fortunately I’d thought to unplug that as well, so when the power came back at 1:30am it didn’t wake them up by turning on their lights.

Not that this is a particularly compelling story, it’s just kind of interesting to see how differently the boys experience things, and how they work through novel experiences.  It’s also a gentle reminder that our emergency supplies are just a little bit lacking.  At least the power was back on by morning, and I didn’t have to deal with three women who couldn’t use a hair dryer, or figure out how to lift a double garage door on a cut-open arm.