The Night the Lights Went Out

So last night, as I was getting Kennady ready for bed and Ben was taking Marlene home and then planning to head to the library to study the night away- we lost power. And by we I mean the 17,000 + people living in the city of Rexburg. I actually heard the power outage went all the way to the Montana border. Gotta love living on the end of the power grid. In the last 5 years I've lived here I've experienced small power outages all through the winter. I don't remember any of them lasting 4 hours, and being the entire city. Luckily, I knew exactly where our candles and lighter was, because Kennady was freaking out, along with all the other children in the complex that were getting ready for bed. After I got the candles lit, Kennady calmed down a little. Ben showed up a few minutes later, acknowledging that power was down all over town, including campus, meaning the library. I told him if he wanted to study he'd better get to the store and get some more candles. He also thought he'd get some for the families that we visit and home teach. Well, Ben came home 20 or so minutes later, after some persuading of the cashiers to let him be the last transaction, with nearly $40 worth of flashlights, because he couldn't find the candles. After distributing them to the families that were home (interestingly enough both families are Brazilian and Portuguese is their first language, one family seemed very comforted to have someone speak to them in their language - Ben, not me, I know very limited Portuguese), we finally got Kennady to go to bed. I'm glad her magic sea horse operates off of batteries. Then Ben stayed up studying and me reading. With our candles and wind-up powered flashlight. I've never worked so hard to read in my life. It was kinda actually nice for me, but I think it stressed Ben out a little (understandably) because he had a final at 7 a.m. this morning and really would have liked to have used the computer. It sure gave us a new meaning to burning the midnight oil. The power came back on just as we went to bed for the night. Our microwave let us know by beeping incessantly until we returned order to its clock. Why do people make machines to nag us? Ok, so it wasn't super interesting, but kinda fun. I wish we had a gas stove and then I would have made popcorn or something.