Who knew Old Navy could be this much fun

This past Friday we woke up to a cold, dark, silent house. Yup, the power went out again. I had woken up around 2 am and knew it was out at that time, but I (foolishly) had faith that all would be restored by morning. Needless to say, I was sadly mistaken.

I called Matt, who was at work already, to see what news he had... it wasn't good, several hundred thousand people were without power, and it could be a few days before power was fully restored. At this time, I wasn't sure the full extent in our area, but all I had were very bad memories of last year's ice storm, when we had no power for nearly 6 days, with Norah running a high fever the entire time - nightmare is a word that comes to mind.

In any case, Norah's daycare called around 7:30 am to let us know they too had lost power and would be closed for the day. It didn't phase me too much at first, as we had a doctors appointment to attend and 9, and surely things would be looking up by then! They weren't.

To say I was beside myself would be an understatement. I just couldn't figure out where we should go, and what we should do! I thought of taking her to my office, thinking attendance would be light and plenty of other people would have their kids in tow... but an office is really not the place for a 2 year old, and the parking lot was unusually full for a Friday... so on Matt's advice, we went to a local diner (with a lot of other families in the same situation, from the looks of things) and then headed to Old Navy, which is a surprisingly good place to take a toddler on a Friday morning... wide clear aisles, funky music, kids play area and fun hats to try on:
(yes, of course I had to buy the hat!) In the afternoon we hunkered down at home, in our bed, with lots of blankets, the DVD player (which luckily had a fully charged battery!) and some toys and books, and apparently were enjoying ourselves so much, I didn't even notice immediately when the power did come on around 4:00... but oh, was I relieved!