Birthday Celebration #2 - "the threat of the storm"

Sunday, June 9th, was the day of Jack and Quent's birthday party at our house. It was a hot day and kind of humid too, but they looked super cute in their sleeveless Detroit Tigers short outfits. We tried to keep cool by staying in the shade and escaping into the coolness of the central air.

The boys were having fun playing outside on the swingset and with all the kids. it seemed like everyone was having a good time despite the heat and humidity.

Then the sirens went off.

We found out there was a tornado watch and a severe thunderstorm warning. So, everybody rounded up and went in the house. Other than the threat of a natural disaster, it was okay because it was time to do the birthday cake anyway!

They both love to sing Happy Birthday,
and they were so happy when they each got their own song!

Jack making his birthday wishes

Quent is just a little excited ;)

Quent needed a little help blowing out his candles, luckily Avery was there to help!

Mmmmm cake and ice cream

But these cars that came on the cake and pretty cool too

Anywho, so we are all in the house at this point and it is storming to beat the band outside (that was so a term my Gramma would use:) The power goes off and comes back on 5-7 times. Honestly, I lost count and jeez I was BUSY hosting a party! So, it finally goes off. For the last time. Luckily it is still pretty light out and we do okay with some candles in some of the dimmer areas of the house.

* Now here is where I have to make a side note that we have a doomed history of crap happening at parties that we host. Terrible weather, ambulances called, I mean really weird stuff, so it only stands to reason that it should happen again!

The boys open their gifts - which by the way they loved, Quent more than Jack but what kid doesn't love cool new stuff and Jack just doesn't like to sit still. What is so cool is that they are just as excited about getting clothes or jammies as they are about the toys and fun stuff! I thought that was cute.




All in all I think everyone had a good time. We all did here. After some 'real' food for dinner and a much needed bath, Jack and Quent crashed for the night. And Luckily again, it was still light enough out that we could see to get them to bed. Now some of the cleaning up after the party was done by candlelight, but oh well.

The initial estimate was that power would be restored by Tuesday 11pm, and we lost power on Sunday afternoon. Oh My! Thank goodness our wonderful neighbors brought back bags of ice for us when they went out for ice so that we could pack the fridge and freezer with ice.

Thank you Charlotte and Chris!

Our power actually came back on Monday at around 3 pm. Yippee! We had survived just fine and never once had to go into the icky, icky basement! (see this post for an icky basement story) I seriously do not know how all those people would have fit into the cramped basement that we have, thank goodness we didn't have to find out.
The power issues took out some stuff in out house for good though - our modem/router was toasted and we had to wait for the new one so I was offline for a few days - ouch! The rest of the computer stuff was fine, all was plugged into a surge protector including the modem, but the modem is connected directly to the phone line, so we think that's what got it.
The microwave display is really whacked! It still seems to work fine, but you can't rely on it for the time. And lastly (that we know of) The window fan in our room is just kaput. Not too bad, could have been so much worse.

After all that, The 2nd birthday bash was still great and I have a whole new appreciation for electricity!