Without Power; With Friends.

About Wednesday of last week the town was a buzz with talk of a coming ice storm.

"It's supposed to be worse than the Christmas Eve storm!" someone said.

"Did you hear that they've cancelled school tomorrow in anticipation?" another countered.

"But it's nearly seventy degrees out!" a third chimed in.

Indeed, it all seemed a little rash, but when you're in Oklahoma, this kind of cold weather storm is sort of a big deal. They don't happen every day, and when they do, the town is left scrambling to salt the roads, plow the streets, and make all the preparations that are second nature in northern cities that experience this sort of thing multiple times every winter.

Thursday arrived and it didn't look quite so bad. Still, Justin was sent home around 11 am from class. Things began to pick up that afternoon; first wind and rain, and then the ice began to form. The wind blew so hard as to make the icicles form at an angle!

We had a couple of flickers in our power, but didn't think much of it...until at 4:45 when the lights went out and didn't come back on.

After a few minutes we looked up the number for the power company and called to report the outage and get an estimate on how long we could expect to wait before the power would be restored.

"I can't give you an accurate estimate at this time. Power should be restored by 11 am on Monday, but it could be sooner."

Monday was a bad answer. Without a working fireplace, four days was way too long to be in an unheated home with an 18 month old. Thankfully, K&J still had power and welcomed us into their home because every hotel we called in Lawton was already full to the brim.

Our stay included Wii golf, bowling, and The Price is Right, Syfy's Alice, a very competitive game of Scrabble, delicious cookies (and other food), hot coffee, a comfortable air mattress, and of course, a visit with good friends. When Justin and Kellen went to check on the status of our power Friday morning they discovered that it had been restored. We stayed another night with K&J anyway. It was that much fun.

After more than four years of growing friendship, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do when we go our separate ways in a few months. Trying to soak up every minute...