You may be wondering why my website has seemingly gone dead. No recent blog posts, less frequent picture updates…etc. I thought I’d check in to reassure everyone that we are still alive. We had 3 busy weeks while we sold our old house, then we did a fundraiser for a charity called Brittany’s Hope and that consumed a week. Now, we have been without power for a week tomorrow because of the recent ice storm here. I have heard rumors it may be until the 22nd before we get our power back.

So, instead of blogging and picture taking, we are gassing the generator, cooking creatively, (or going out to eat) and busying ourselves with basic needs rather than the normal riff-raff.

Today, we visited a laundromat. I went in and as soon as I walked in and saw “LAUNDRY SOAP” on the dispenser on the wall, I realized I forgot soap. I said out loud, “Oh no, I forgot my soap.” The lady there said, “If you want to spend a lot of money, you can get soap in that machine.” Why, thank you. So, I left to go to CVS to get soap, candy, and survival gear.

As we left, Jacob remarked, “This laundromat looks like someone bought a liquor store and threw some washers and dryers in there.” It was rather dark and dank with a cracked tile floor and dirty ceiling. Right then, he solved a life long mystery for me as to how anyone ever came up with the idea of a laundro-bar.

This laundromat was sans liquor- and probably a good thing as I may have been tempted to knock back a strong drink today in all the craziness of recent life. Even better than whiskey though, this laundromat had cable tv. You might not know this, but when your kids don’t have cable tv, and then all of a sudden they have it- it’s amazing what that does. It’s like my four children were not even there while I washed load after load and then folded dryer after dryer of laundry. They sat on cheap plastic lawn chairs and ate gummy worms while their parched brains soaked up the warm glow of cable tv. That was way better than whiskey.

I wasn’t sure how this laundromat thing would go today. I haven’t been to the laundromat in some time. I got a weeks worth of laundry done in 2 hours for 10 bucks. I’m really considering going back. The dryers there were so huge, I can’t help but think what other things could I dry in one of those? I think we could nearly fit my entire family in one. Why can’t I buy one of THOSE at Sears?

I hope to get our electricity back soon, but in a strange sort of way this has been a little bit of a break from our regular routine. Sure, some things are harder and I really HATE being cold, but other things you just let go because either you have to, or you feel like you can. Jacob said, “Mom, when the electricity comes back on, can we just pretend it’s not and keep doing what we are doing?” Well Jacob, I prefer to sleep in a warm bed rather than a cold one and I sure like to be able to vacuum especially when half of Thomas’ food winds up on the floor, so no. But, we may not do things EXACTLY like before. As much as we love the business of raising puppies, we are scaling way back for more family time. I think these will be our last litters for awhile. So, get them while you can!

I better get busy figuring out dinner. Thanks to all of you who thought of us after hearing news of the ice storm. No offense taken if you didn’t. Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, and all of that fun stuff. Check back soon for our Christmas Tree blog.