On Saturday the 15th of December 2018 most of Scotland had amber weather warnings (the Met Office issue yellow, amber & red warnings, red being the most serious with great risk to life if you go out in it) in place as snow and icy rain was forecast. I was meant to be performing in a play that evening (a bit more about that HERE) but by late afternoon the stormy weather we'd been promised kicked off and within two hours I could tell I wasn't getting up the hill by our house with my car, never mind successfully completing the drive to the venue. I wasn't the only one in that situation as we all live rurally so the show has been postponed.
Most of the day it was windy but not much coming down from the skies, the only way you could tell the weather was truly bad was that our internet connection broke in the morning. We rely on satellite broadband as our telephone line out in the glen isn't strong enough to carry the signal to our house (it's barely strong enough for our phone line to be honest, we've got terrible connection with a constant crackle, in fact our telephone line hadn't been working the two days before the storm - mobile reception is also non existent). But the snow came fast once it started: icy rain is definitely a better description; it looked like snow as it covered the ground but was hard and icy instantly and our house and cars was covered rapidly (by the time morning came a lot of it had had time to melt as the temperatures weren't as cold as the strong winds were making it feel).
At about 20:30 I was feeding the baby who'd woken up, it was obviously already dark in his room but all of a sudden it felt darker yet. I figured the electricity had been cut when I noticed the light on his monitor had disappeared. All I could think was that I was glad my phone was fully charged so I had light (by the time I was done feeding him my husband had time to get candles out everywhere so I needn't have been concerned) and that I had a game downloaded on it to play - usually this is when I do most of my online browsing and work on my blog, but I need the internet for that.
I was also incredibly glad I had made sure to fill up several 5 litre bottles of water. We have a small burn at the back of our house where we get our water from. It's mostly fantastic to get fresh spring water straight to the house, but we had lots of issues with the pumps and pipes last winter. Just as we make sure we fill our fridge and freezer when there's a weather warning on because of where we live, we've now gotten into the habit of making sure we have plenty of water. Just as well as our pumps obviously run on electricity so we had no water till it was back on (we just had to hope the pipes wouldn't freeze while there was no water running through regularly).
It was mostly super cosy to sit in front of the fire with lots of of candles lit, enjoying a wee weekend drink with the husband. But it makes you realise how much you rely on electricity! Most of the things I didn't miss, we'd lost the the signal a little while before the power cut completely so we had had everything modern stripped away gradually. I felt most handicapped not having the kids' monitors working through the night. It was mostly an issue with our eldest who insists on a night light and who wakes up when it's too dark. So she spent a lot of the night waking up and shouting till we could either re-light a candle or just give her a reassuring cuddle. I'd have brought her in with us but if her little sister had woken up in the dark alone she'd have been even more scared and having both the girls in the bed with us when we already co-sleep with the baby becomes crowded to say the least. We did end up with all five us snuggling in our bed come 6:30 am though, knowing we couldn't go down and get warm in front of the TV like we usually do in the mornings before we all get ready.
I don't think the kids get that much screen time but it's amazing how long a morning can feel without the oven available, or some music for entertainment, especially when it's dark till quite late this time of year. The Christmas tree looked particularly miserable...
The kids got warmed up by going outside and "helping" their dad shovel the snow off the drive and digging out his car. I think it's safe to say he did most of the work but the girls loved playing in the snow. And then just as we were coming up to midday we got our electricity back!Our internet didn't get a signal again until Monday so it felt like we were out of contact with the outside world for longer than we were snowed in (the roads were passable by Sunday afternoon).
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