That was one expensive dinner!

Of course I did not have my camera last night, a very memorable night...

We went out to dinner with a group of friends to Red Lobster. We were having a great time, good conversation, our kids were being well behaved, we couldn't wait to eat our food! Then the lights went out. We live in one of the windiest cities in the nation, I am quite sure of it. We are basically at the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge and it sends some nice gusts our way. Anyways, luckily our food had just come up to the window when the power went out, so they went ahead and brought our food out and we continued to dine in the dark. The kids thought it was great, and my coconut shrimp was divine!! We finished our meal in the dark, paid with a manual credit card machine and were on our way. 

We already had a babysitter lined up so we could go to the movies after dinner. We headed up the street home and find our street is barricaded off. We go around three different ways, and about three blocks around our apartment is blocked off by cop cars and flares. Apparently a tree had fallen and was leaning on a power line just across the street from us. We begged for them to let us get to our apartment. We had plans!! No such luck... "it was too dangerous." Though they didn't evacuate anyone within the blocked area. Had we not gone out to dinner we could have just hung out in our powerless home all night and avoided what was to come. All we could do was wait. 

We drove around to a different block where we could get a good view of the tree and damage. That is where I wish I had my camera! The tree and power line were at about a 45 degree angle to the street. It was bad. We just turned a movie on in the car and waited for PGE to do their thing. Then we waited some more. Nobody knew how long this was going to take. We started the waiting at about 7:00pm and finally at 9:30pm, when we noticed that not much work had been done to get the tree and power line fixed we called it quits. PGE was going to be there all night, it was apparent.

So, we drove down to the Days Inn and booked ourself a room. I did manage to talk the customer service lady into taking $20 off of our room with our sob story. Since we didn't have ANYTHING for a night stay we drove to our friend Carolyn's house, who kindly loaned us pajamas for our kids, a pack and play, and offered to house us. Luckily she has a boy a year older than Carter and a girl a little younger than Andi. We got into our room a little before 10 and tried to get our kids to sleep. Andi actually didn't have a problem at all, but Carter was another story. He layed next to me for about 15 minutes, really still and quiet, and then got restless and excited. We finally just let him curl up next to us and watch TV. He probably fell asleep at about 11pm. He kept popping up in the middle of the night because of the howling of the wind. Andi made a couple of squawks in the middle of the night too. I was hoping for a little bit of a sleep in, but our kids decided to wake up at 7am. We did enjoy our continental breakfast and headed home to get ready for church.

Upon our arrival home we find a tree on our property has been uprooted and blown over and smashed into our dumpster (luckily nothing more). A bunch of our fence had also blown over. Luckily we were allowed back on our street though. We come inside and lo and behold, we have no power!! We were going on 13 or 14 hours now. Well, without hot water to shower with, tired and crabby kids, we decided to bag church. Not only did we bag church but we went to the store to buy ice to put all of our fridge stuff into a cooler- I know, SINNERS! Luckily our power came on between 10:30-11:00. Then we just vegged and watched movies all day. Our kids napped for about 3 hours and we are looking forward to a good nights sleep in our own beds. (knock on wood) The wind has calmed down a little bit, so hopefully the worst is over.