What A Week

Today was lovely. It was pretty normal. Much UNlike last week.

I knew looking at the calender at the start of last week, that it was going to be a busy one. I had scheduled: two Young Women meetings, a Mom's Group outing I organized, making potato salad for the Stake Youth Trek, writing 10 letters for Girl's Camp, babysitting for a family in our ward going through a difficult time, an activity at the library I promised Caroline we'd do, and a visit from Dave's mother. And of course my usual activities - cooking, cleaning, taking care of husband and child, mutual and preparing a YW lesson for Sunday.

Yes, it promised to be a busy week, but I had no idea how crazy it would be too!

My most daunting task was the potato salad. My assignment was to make enough potato salad for 50 people. I was given 15lbs of potatoes, 2 dozen eggs and lots of veggies. I decided to brake this up into 3 days. I boiled/peeled eggs one day, boiled potatoes and chopped the veggies one day (boiling took forever because I didn't have a pot big enough - it took 6 shifts!) and the last day I cut the potatoes and eggs, made the dressing and put it all together. It took many hours in the kitchen!

Then the Bishop asked if we could speak on Sunday. Sure.

Then Friday happened.

Late in the afternoon, we heard the tornado sirens. The power went out and Caroline and I camped in the bathroom. Dave stayed at a house he was working on until it was safe and came home around 7:30. We still didn't have power so we went out for a late dinner. Parts of the city were still out of power and our neighborhood was a mess of tree parts. Our house and yard was fine, but the wind broke our fence lock. The tornado touched down about 10 miles east of us in Olive Branch and did damage to a lot of homes and buildings there, so we were lucky.

I fully expected to have power when we got home, but no. I did get a message though that the Trek was cut short and they no longer needed the 25lbs of potato salad in my fridge. Crap.

So the next morning, we still didn't have power but we did have 2 extra little girls to watch and talks to write! Our freezer had melted over night and there was a pool of water in our kitchen. The girls kept asking for TV and popcorn or macaroni and cheese! Sorry, no electricity! The poor things were hot without AC and fans. It was an...interesting day.

We got power back late that afternoon. I literally did a happy dance! But we found out at church on Sunday that many in our ward still didn't have electricity.

So today I'm thankful simply that it's today and not last week! I'm thankful for Air Conditioning!

I hope this is not a common occurrence around here...