Halloween and Thad's visit

Halloween - October 31st.

Thad's visit - October 29th.
Largest, earliest snowstorm to hit Connecticut, like, ever - October 29th

We lost power at about 3:30 on Saturday the 29th, we stayed in through the night as the snow fell. We all slept together in the girl's room to keep it nice and toasty. In the morning we had 12-18" of snow and we heard that it would take probably a week to get the power back on. Basically the whole state, plus parts of surrounding states were without power. So we packed up and headed out the door. We didn't have great phone reception (more than a few cell towers had been damaged) and the roads were extremely treacherous with downed power lines and trees all over the place. We made it to the highway with less than 1/2 tank of gas. We tried to stop and get gas a few times but the cars were lined up or the stations were just plain out of gas. Once we made it out of CT and closer into Boston we found some gas and food.

I called my amazing and gracious Cousin Megan to see if we could take refuge at their house outside of Boston and she offered before I could even ask. She and her whole family were amazing and so much fun to hang out with. She also happened to have a 4 year old son - doesn't get better than that.

On Monday we hooked up with Thad, who was staying with our friend in Cambridge. We played at the house all day then Anna finally got to go Trick or Treating. This was her first time and she was great at it; not at all shy or timid, and also very polite. I took her for half the time, then Thad took her while I took a cold Eliza Unicorn inside.

So pretty much the whole week we had a little vacation. Ben worked from his computer at Megan's or took the day off to play. We went to the Museum of Science in Boston - It had some awesome exhibits. At one table you could make a bobsled out of the materials they provided, the goal was to either have the fastest or the slowest bobsled and Anna's was the slowest. It took 14 seconds to go down a 3 foot ramp. So we got to put her name up on the leader board. (she was competing against all the high school kids there on a field trip). Thad and I and the girls went to Plimouth  Plantation, which was pretty fun, except for the 2,000 field trippers chasing the chickens around. We just hung out until 2:00 when we knew they had to leave.

All the while we were checking the online map of Connecticut outages. It was bleak. Our town consistently had the highest percentage of customers without power. It was hard watch as it just didn't improve for the first 5-6 days. The original goal was to have power back on for 99% of the state by Sunday night, we were still above 50% that night. So they pushed the timeline back to Monday, then Wednesday.

We also spent a few days with Gramma Lynne who also lives near Boston. At the end of the week she went on vacation and let us take over her condo for a few nights, we were so grateful for that. We got to play with Aunt Rachel, playing Candyland and doing some paintings.

We planned to stay until Tuesday morning then head back. On our drive in we got the call from our neighbors that the power was restored at 3:30 that morning. Most of the trees in our complex were missing a few branches, it looks very different.