Iced out!

Belated Merry Christmas to everyone!!.

Christmas came and went with little fanfare for us this year. Not alot of cerebrating, in fact up to now we haven't exchanged gifts. Mainly because we got caught up in the aftermath of the ice storm which hit Toronto last Saturday and left 90,000 households without power. We braved it out in our home til Monday morning but then ran out of firewood so had to pack up cause well with the babies and all it really wasn't a pleasant atmosphere for them to be in.

And so we trekked over to a friend's place where we hunkered down and waited out the repairs. Quite the number of fallen tree limbs in our backyard but luckily no damage to the wires around our home but yet we still waited and waited.

Basically in a circumstance like that all thoughts of Christmas go through the window and its all about survival. We checked in on the lights on Tuesday and Christmas day Wednesday but still nothing and the house was colder than an icebox.

 As an aside, my son was singing in the church choir on Christmas Eve and even though the church was without power the service still went on by candlelight. Quite the experience and a show that the joy of Christmas although tempered by adversity could not be overwhelmed by it.

Eventually though and thankfully all our power came back to normal so we are back home with lights, power and heat restored although some of our neighbours are still facing day 6 of no power.

Kind of sucks but  our experience puts things into perspective.

People are still upset and quite rightfully so that more wasn't done earlier to handle the households without power as a few people have died in their homes. I mean we also went through the great power outage of 2003 back then living in an apartment where not only was there no power but because we were on the upper floors we had no water as well. All in all we were one of the last to get our power back then and I was hoping the law of averages would even things out now but alas no we still waited 5 days to be restored.

Still 3 days in the summer without power as a married couple with no kids isn't that bad compared to 4-5 days in the winter without heat with a 7 year old and two nine month babies.

But with God's help and that of some great people who took all of us in we survived.

My thoughts go out to the folk here still without power as this drags on and also to the folk in St Vincent who were affected by the rains and mudslide on Christmas Eve.

Like I said tragedy and adversity puts it all in perspective.  But such is life, we survive and we move on.

Seasons best to everyone.