Pitch Black Friday

Sometime after midnight the electricity went off in this neighborhood. Talk about a Black Friday, with the rain and cloud cover the house was pitch black. Ben & Taunya's family were staying at the apartment. It was so black there they decided to load the kids up and drive them over here in hopes we had candles or flashlights. We didn't but we were able to get the stove going and had a pot of coffee ready. Coffee grounds ended up all over the stove and counter tops as it was so black in the kitchen it was hard to tell exactly where to pour. We were hoping the electricity would turn back on before breakfast needed to be cooked but it didn't. When Jon and Kim came down we decided we would try to take everyone out to the Hog Trough for breakfast but just to make sure they were open tried to call and no answer. Mark decided to drive in to Hanna City to see if they were open and came back with the answer they were not and the outage was more widespread than we thought. Jon and Kim decided to just leave for their home in Elgin. Ben and Taunya left for their home in Bloomington about the time Rhoda and Lee came over. Rhoda wanted a hot shower so they decided to head for home too. Phil came over with the 3 girls as Anna had to work. He was so happy to find out we had coffee. By this time there was just enough light coming in the kitchen window to start cooking so we made bacon and eggs and served that with Kim's delicious pumpkin bread. A fire was started in the wood burner to warm the house up. The temperatures were above freezing but not by that much, pretty much mid 30s with rain all day. Phil is amazing. He brought an inverter with the truck and was able to bring enough electricity into the house to charge the phones, ipad and run the television. I watched Disney's Tarzan for the first time ever! It didn't quite follow the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs which I read over and over as a child. I still remember having nightmares about Africa after reading those books and wondering why anyone would want to visit there. Just for the record I was very young, maybe around 9 or 10 when I discovered these books.
The farrier arrived at 1:00 pm and we only had Marika done. It was just too cold wet and dark to think about doing the foals. After 15 hours of darkness the lights suddenly came on around 4:00 pm.
Ruth and Fedi on the other hand had electricity all day. That meant they had all the company today. The cousins all got together to play games and best of all that meant Ruth had to feed them!

Mom didn't go to Ruth's she was too busy decorating her house for Christmas in the dark. She was hanging lights and kept plugging them in to see if they were working before hanging and was reminded each time that she had no electricity. I give her credit though she didn't quit and only tonight now that the power is back on will find out if she needs to take any strands down. Mark worked on getting room in the garage for the car.