An Unexpected Storm

Photos snapped from the car (w/ my phone) the morning after the storm

So, if you've been watching the news recently, then you probably heard about the storm that hit the Northern VA area this past weekend. You know, the one that left more than 2 million people without electricity during the middle of an extreme heat wave? Yep, that's the one.

For those of you who don't know, we're currently stationed in this area, and, like many others, were without power for the last couple days. Thankfully, this was the worst of it for us. After witnessing the storm (from inside of course) and seeing the aftermath, we feel extremely lucky that this was the only way in which we were affected.

Our power went out Friday night around 10:45pm, and we woke up Saturday morning to find out it was still out. We thought, well, this sucks but we'll just get breakfast and run our errands, and it should hopefully be on when we get back. We hopped in the car and drove the 5 or so miles down the street to IHOP to find it, too, was without power. Whaa?? We soon realized many people had the same idea as us, only there wasn't anywhere to go...because nothing was open. It was then that we decided to drive to a different area of town (about 15 minutes or so in the opposite direction), where we were lucky enough to find an open Starbucks and movie theater. We planned on taking the kids to see Brave anyway, so why not? Our electricity should most def be back on once we get out...or so we thought. When we got out of the movie, I quickly skimmed through the military base's Facebook pages to see if there was any news, which is when I discovered that not only was the power not on, but it was reported to be out for at least another 24-48 hours. Sigh.

At this point, we decided to go ahead and book a hotel because I just don't do heat well. The hubs even said something along the lines of, "The kids and I could be okay staying at home, but I don't wanna have to listen to you bitch about how hot it is all night!" Yep, sounds about right, lol. So yeah, we ended up staying at a hotel both Saturday and Sunday night. We did some shopping, went swimming at the hotel's indoor pool (well, Dan + the kids did), and ate a bunch of naughty food. All in all, it wasn't too bad of a time. Especially since we found out we have renter's insurance we didn't know about (it's apparently rolled into our rent) that's going to reimburse us for all of our out-of-pocket expenses. This includes our hotel stay, eating out and, most importantly, the cost of our spoiled food. Thank goodness, cuz we were pretty bummed to find out that all the refrigerated food we just purchased at Costco on Friday went bad. This definitely made the whole weekend much better. Well, this, and finding out late Sunday afternoon that our power was back on. But since it was already paid for, we went ahead and stayed the night at the hotel anyway. Then Dan brought us home early this morning before driving in to work.

So yeah, we're back home now and I'm feeling oh so grateful for the way things worked out for us. Especially because I know a lot of people haven't been as lucky (I think somewhere around 500k are still without power). The electric companies seem to be working hard to do everything they can, though, so hopefully everyone gets their power back soon. Fingers crossed!