Life is Back to "Normal"

Dear Kiddos, 

After 5 days of no running water to the house, I am happy to report that water is back and running. The whole experience was super inconvenient, and irritating, because we didn't know if the water outage would be a few hours, or days, but the water that we had saved up before the shut-down was enough to carry us through the outage and beyond. 

Before we got water, we tried to stay active inside, but not too active...so we revived Cosmic kids yoga

Hailey, you are now able to do more than you were able to do last time we tried it (like a few months ago...maybe it was a year? Who knows, the time is really all just a blur.) 

On the last cold day, we went back out to give one last huzzah with sledding. Hailey, you came along and had a blast for a little...

but then you got intrigued by all the icicles and started to play with those. 

The conditions weren't as good as the first time we went sledding, but it was good enough. 

Then, things started to warm up and we started to collect water from the downspouts. We ended up collecting probably over 100 gallons of water and ended up not using too much of it, but again, we didn't know how long the outage would last and thought that we should be safe. Pro-tip, downspout water is way cleaner than melted snow. Each snowflake forms around a speck of dust, so when we would melt down a pot of snow, we always had a layer of sediment that would settle at the bottom. 

So, with all the collected water, and inspired by a video created by a neighbor who was able to connect the water from his pool into his water heater, Daddy decided to try to engineer a system that would feed the harvested gutter water into our hot water heater. 

He worked on it all afternoon! And in the end, we just got a little trickle of water from the faucets downstairs. Not enough to take a shower by any means, but I guess it was kind of cool that it kinda worked... 

There was a moment when I had a brief feeling of desperation. This happened when I was hand washing a small load of undies and pants for the girls in the sink with harvested and boiled snow. That moment really helped me gain an appreciation for the modern comforts that we have. Just 2 generations ago, dishwashers and washing machines weren't even a thing and people just washed everything by hand! Who has time for that nowadays?!?

Haha, the irony. We did watch a lot of movies during this time. We watched about a movie a day. To conserve electricity, we kept the thermostat low and in the afternoons we would snuggle on the couch and watch a movie. (Well, I snuggled with you guys just 1 day, the other times I was outside harvesting snow.)

As the temperature warmed up, the igloo was still standing strong. As of yesterday, there was still a little bit of snow left over, but today's 76 degree weather melted what was left really quickly. 

Hailey, you must have literally created over 100 pieces of art this week. Seriously, you just make one thing after another and when you are bored, you always run over and ask if you can paint. I have the painting station permanently set up for you right now and you just go to town! You even made your own chef hat, menu, and pretend food! 

Nathan, you are currently working on the push up challenge for martial arts. You have to be able to do 50 push ups and so far you can do 25 good ones before you collapse as shown below. Slowly, day by day, I know you will be able to accomplish this. 

After 5 days of no showering (what broke me was my hair) we finally threw in the towel and asked our friends in Round Rock if we could come over for showers and to visit. It was a while since we have seen them so it was a good to finally be able to actually see their little girl in person. 

Of course, after we were all clean and prepared to go another 5 days without showering, the water came on that evening. That was Sunday. We waited a couple of days for the city water pressure to improve and we did our first small load of laundry in the washing machine today. It was awesome. The agitator never moved so beautifully. 

Today, we went to Barton Creek greenbelt. The weather was perfect. There were a few wet feet and shorts, but after surviving a natural disaster, we didn't let that get us down!  It's so hard to believe that only last week the low was 7 degrees and today it was 76 degrees! 

COVID numbers are looking great as the most vulnerable in the community are now vaccinated. Things are looking up. Hannah and Nathan, you both have belt testing tomorrow, so hopefully you  both will be in shape for it. Keeping fingers crossed. 

Love,

Mommy