power outages, generators, homeless man and lost teeth

Alright, none of those things are techinically related to the other, just things that have occured in our lives over the last few days. Last Friday we had an unexpected snow storm that left us with about 9 inches of snow, some freezing rain and WIND! All of that caused our power to go out at 8AM and it stayed off until yesterday.

We muddled through Saturday and even got our slightly dirty selves to church for Easter, but quickly realized we needed a generator for a variety of reason. Even our church 10 miles from here lost power and so we had our Lutheran service with our pastor at the local Presbyterian church. It was a nice mixture of congregations with our Lutheran pastor leading and some dazed and confused looking Presbyterians. Secondly, we have an entire dead cow in our freezer and to lose that amount of meat would be VERY expensive. Lastly, I was nearing the end of my patience in dealing with children who had no electronic recreation. God I missed TV! After showing up for church with wet hair and 2 boys who had no clean pants, we saw the necessity of buying a generator.

We now proudly own an 8000 watt generator which illuminated some of our rooms, brought us television, and powered up our satellite internet! Oh, and it also saved our beef in the freezer! About 24 hours after purchasing our beautiful, handsome, loved generator, the lights came on...a full 5 days before the power company's expectation. Yahoooo!

Jerome has now lost 2 teeth and since he doesn't sleep with a pillow, he has been requesting that I put the baggie containing his teeth under my pillow. I kind of like this accomodation as it didn't require me to actually get my butt out of bed in the middle of the night to stuff money under his pillow and take the tooth. He now has quite the smile with 3 missing teeth and he looks darling with his crooked, toothless grin. Cute until he needs braces that is!

Yesterday I headed into town to pick up the laundry I dropped off on Monday at a place in town that washes, dries, folds/hangs your laundry for $1 a pound. Since the power had gone off on Friday and I had several days worth of laundry built up, I needed a place to get all the boys dirty clothes washed. I lugged in every last dirty thing in this house, except the boys, and it totaled 94 pounds. Do you know how long it would have taken me to wash and fold that amount of laundry?? Days I tell you. So for $94, I could hardly complain to have everything washed and neatly folded. My sister asked if I will now be selling my washer and dryer and i believe that is a distinct chance. I plan on bringing things into the laundry place now verrrrrrrry often.

So you may be wondering how the homeless man fits into our goings-on? Driving into town yesterday we happened to notice a homeless man sitting on the shoulder of the highway almost directly in front of the Highway Patrol office. I picked up the laundry, 2 gallons of milk and ran thru the drive-thru at McDonalds. I mentioned to Thomas that the man on the road was homeless, and pretty down on his luck and wondered what we could do to help him. Thomas had
his allowance money with him and I suggested he use part of it to buy the poor guy a Big Mac meal at McDonalds. Thomas did just that with his own money. We drove back to the guy on the side of the highway, pulled over and Thomas hopped out to give the man his meal and drink. The man thanked him profusely and the smile on Thomas' face was beautiful. He felt so proud of himself and he radiated the feeling all day that only comes from having done something kind for someone else. I hope he never forgets how good it feels to do a random act of kindness for a stranger. I love his little tender heart.

So that is our weeks happenings. I also am using the crockpot again tonight to make a casserole of Sherpherd's pie. It smells so yummy. The crockpot is the second best invention in the world, second only to my fabulous generator!