A cold welcome home...

When I got back to North Dakota from Utah the weather was terrible! I got home late on Thursday night and decided to take it easy at home all day friday...afterall I had driven 16 hours in the car alone with two kids! Friday was REALLY rainy and cold. When Ike got home from work he told me that there was a winter storm warning. Whatev. There is ALWAYS a winter storm warning in North Dakota. Well...with winds of 50+ miles an hour Williston ended up without out power...for days! There were tons of HUGE trees down in the middle of roads, on top of cars and a few houses. There were also lots of downed power lines. We were lucky enough to have a power company that got their power up and running quickly. We were only without power for 24 hours or so. We also lucked out with a gas stove that kept us nice and toasty. We also have a gas water heater, so we had hot water most of that day, until the water in the basement got high enough to hit the pilot light. Our basement started flooding the first of April. When the power went out and the pumps weren't running it got up to two feet down there. It is an unfinished basement but our furnace has been out since then because the pilot light is under water. We have a heater on the wall in our bedroom and the upstairs, the kids rooms, is heated with a space heater anyway. There are no heat vents to the upstairs...gotta love little old houses. :)
A few of our friends had no heat and Tonya's family had no heat or water. So it became a party at our house! Did I mention the snow? Yep. Lots of snow. So much for Spring. Tiffany, her husband and 4 kids came and hung out. Mandy, her husband and 3 kids also came. As well as Tonya, her husband and 3 kids. Yes there were 12 kids in my tiny house all weekend! We had a good time though. Most of the kids slept here and kept warm. The adults went home and toughed it out. Mandy and Logan did stay one night at our house though. We never really roughed it. We had the laptop to watch movies on that we were able to charge in the car. This was a good thing when it got dark but the kids were still wound up.

We had practically no groceries since I had been out of town for a month. We have food storage in the basement but it was tough to get to because of the 2 feet of water down there. Everyone brought food from their houses and we made lots of yummy treats. I called my mom for her brownie recipe and she suggested that we might consider making something like bread. haha The brownies were delicious and we made bread too. We also had no bake cookies. Nobody was going hungry around here.

The kids had a blast playing and destroying my house. I only had a bit of a panic attack over it. :) Mandy's little boy Tyson came up with the genius idea of sledding down our roof. I said we better hurry and take pictures before we needed to head to the hospital. It was actually a beautiful day after the storm had passed.




Luckily no one was hurt. They made the "slide" close enough to the house so they didn't fall off the roof. Alli did get fiberglass slivers in her hand when they decided to try again later after the snow was all gone. Crazy kids. I told Emma she could watch but not slide down the roof. Not that she would even consider it!
Church was cancelled on Sunday so we all just hung out. On Monday I went to work to process flowers for Mother's Day. They still had no power at the shop but did have a generator so we worked away to lamp light. The power was restored to Williston on Monday night but there were lots of people outside of town that were without for a week. I worked that entire week at the shop and also did a craft show on Saturday. I also worked the following Monday. That day was extra crazy. They had opened the shop on Sunday for cash and carry only. They sold every single thing out of the cooler. It was completely empty! We worked hard all day to get the daily orders out and attempt to restock the cooler. You would be amazed at how many people order flowers AFTER the holiday. I love working at the shop but it has been a nice break not to work the past couple weeks.