SNOVID

Texas had a historic weather event with plummeting record-breaking lows, record amounts of snowfall. It’s the winter storm that seems to come once every 10 or so years they say. It was a WILD week. Skip to the end for some TLDR lists if you don't want the whole story.

I was prepared for and expected rolling blackouts so when the power initially went out Monday morning I expected it and wasn't worried. But when hours and hours drug on and the house was getting colder and colder I started to worry. We kept the kids bundled in layers. Brooks  was NOT happy about that and he was mad I wouldn't let him play in the snow. We all stayed in the living room and completely shut off Carson's room. His room is the coldest (often 10 degrees lower) in the house. We set up the pack n play in Brooks' room and the boys shared a room during this. We went for a drive to warm up and after dinner went to a friends house who had a generator. We were going to stay the night there but the power came on at 9pm so we went back home to keep watch of the house.

We filled up all the rest of the large containers we had because we knew the pipes would probably freeze. We kept all the taps trickling constantly. We didn't actually have to use this water though because we had enough storage already- win!

 

I was wearing leggings, 2 pairs of sweats, long sleeve shirt, sweater, sherpa sweat, socks, wool socks and a beanie. I was still cold. I think the house got down to 47 or 50?

Thankfully we had power all night until Tuesday at 6am and it went out again. We prepared for a repeat day but we ended up getting power around noon I think, then it went out again at 6pm but came back on at 8pm I think.. or something close to that. I feel like I handled it all better the second day because it didn't feel like we were indefinitely living without power, I felt a light at the end of the tunnel.

This is what my living room looked like playing allllll day with the kids. I was just focused on keeping them happy and feeling safe. The power came on, we didn't have internet, so we pulled out the DVD player and the kids enjoyed a well deserved movie.

Since we had power Brooks got the play in the snow and obviously he was so happy. He loved it and would stay out for hours.

 

The power went out again right around 5pm so we made and ate tacos in the dark! So thankful for the gas stove top.

Wednesday we had power but then we had to boil water due to the water sanitation plants being without power too. We were so grateful for heat and to cook, we still couldn't clean very well. Most of the pipes were still frozen but starting to thaw out. I ran the dishwasher on empty Thursday and the washer Friday (flooded the laundry room yay!). Got the dishwasher fully running by saturday and was able to do all the laundry Monday or Tuesday. We had so much laundry to do! From all the layers we were wearing, just normal laundry, all the towels from the leaking windowsils, more towels from the flooded laundry room. It was just a lot of laundry.

This is what the water looked like AFTER we boiled it. If you wouldn't drink this you need to have water storage!! We only used this for dishes.

 Flooded my laundry room. Yay.

Love these Kirkland gallon jugs! This is what we drank instead of constantly going through smaller water bottles. I haven't found them in store again yet but I hope to restock this or something similar!

Top 5 Things People Ran Out of in My Neighborhood:

1. Water to drink
2. Food to eat. Perishable food went bad in the fridge
3. A way to stay warm with no electricity
4. A way to cook or boil water with no electricity. If your grill is electric it won't work!
5. Fuel: Gas for cars, generators, grills, campstoves. Wood for fireplace. Kerosene for heater if that applies to you.

Things I loved having that you might not have thought about before

1. Headlamp. Hands free light is a MUST with kids: diaper changes, helping them go to the bathroom, holding a child while trying to cook dinner it is SO HELPFUL.
2. Baby wipes. Our water was contaminated and everyone is conserving bottled water for drinking and cooking, you can't waste any. These were amazing for wiping kids hands and face after meals, wiping high chair trays, cleaning countertops and quick spills.
3. Spray bottle. When you're conserving water a spray bottle comes in handy when you do need to wash hands, brush teeth or even rinse dishes so you're not pouring aimlessly. Trust me it helps so much.
4. Bucket. Toilets don't flush when you don't have running water. But if you dump a bucket of water in they'll empty out. We used our mop bucket.
5. Music. Brooks LOVES music so even being able to play some songs from my itunes, which I never used anyone, raised our spirits and dancing helped warm us up.
6. White noise machine with a battery back up. If your kid sleeps with white noise this is something to think about! Power goes out in the middle of the night, so does the white noise. Brooks woke up scared, sad the power was out and cold. Carson's white noise is rechargeable, it just diverted to battery so he didn't wake up. When you're living through something like this you are TIRED and the kids are TIRED. It's worth it to have a seemless backup so they sleep peacefully through it. 

Things I Will Purchase Going Forward

1. Small generators and a couple heaters - or think fans in you live in a hot climate
2. Firewood or a duralog
3. More water. We never ran out, we had plenty but I can see if this lasted longer we would need more. Think bathing, dishes, laundry on top of drinking and cooking. If you keep dry rice or beans in your food storage you'll need water for those too!
4. Briquettes. Another backup way to cook and eat. I actually found some in my garage so I was more prepared than I thought, win!
5. Propane. We have some propane but again if we had to use it I think we'd need more.
6. A Solar Power Bank. The only way we had to charge our phones was in our car. This would be nice so we can conserve gas and stay off the icy roads.

Things I had that I needed:

Stored water: Bottled water, Gallons of water, large containers of water (ours are 7 gallons). Before our pipes froze we filled all the large containers we had with water and our tubs. Then we weren’t getting much out of our pipe. Because our water treatment centers lost power too we had to boil any water we needed to consume, cook or wash hands or dishes with. Having that water we didn’t need to boil before consuming was very helpful. Also people were using and melting the snow to get clean water which is also a useful tip. The boiled water looked nasty and I wouldn't want to drink it.

Food: Thankfully our freezers kept amazingly well, we kept the rest of our perishable fridge things in the garage because it definitely cold enough. The first day we ate mac n cheese for lunch, spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner. We made tacos the next night all without power, on our gas stove top.

Gas Stove: Our oven stovetop is gas so we could turn the knob and manually light it. This is how we cooked everything and boiled our water. IF we didn’t have a gas stove we could have pulled out our 2 camping gas stoves.

Lanterns (battery), flashlights, unscented candles for light,