Hot & Humid in Houston: Winter Storm

What a week! Monday morning the kids were ecstatic because there was snow (mostly ice) outside. It was a beautiful scene to see with the fresh white snow covering everything. It may have been about an inch and it was mostly ice with a small layer of snow on top. The kids were so excited we had to force them to eat breakfast before heading outside. It took a long time to get them properly bundled up. They didn't believe me when I said that temperatures in the teens felt really, really cold and they really, really needed to wear more layers. Frustrations mounted when they were relegated to go back upstairs for additional layers. Josiah wanted to wear two short sleeve t-shirts under his winter coat. But I'm wearing two shirts. Caroline was the same, but with pants. Henry and Caroline chose to wear face masks to keep their faces warm. We had to go old-school and do grocery bags between layers of socks to waterproof. The boys' only shoes are sneakers and flip flops, but Caroline had rain boots. I asked them to play in the backyard first because Benson was so eager to go outside with them. All four of them loved the snow. Benson was bouncing all over the place, sticking his face in it, licking it, and trying to eat it. They had a lot of fun. After a while, the neighbor kid knocked so they moved to the front. They attempted a snow ball fight, but it wasn't the right kind of snow - it was very powdery and mostly ice.

In the early afternoon I took a walk with the kids and the neighbor boy. We walked up by the baseball field where they attempted to run the bases. We stopped at the swings. Then we looped back around to go home. It was bitterly cold, slightly windy, and very slippery with the ice. After that we had to stay in because all the winter gear was soaked and needed to dry.

They still had a good afternoon and we had a family movie night. The worst we experienced that day was that it was hard to maintain heat in the house. The downstairs was significantly colder than the upstairs. We put Benson's crate upstairs for the night so he wouldn't get too cold. Though we were doing well, by Monday night almost half the people we knew from our homeschool group and church had been without power for 24 hours. A few lost water.

Tuesday things got a bit worse. It was even colder. Everyone we knew who had lost power still had no power and even more families we knew were added to the no-power list. Our house, though we had power, was quite cold because it couldn't retain the heat well. Things here are not properly insulated for the cold. We also had turned our heat much lower to conserve energy. We were told to expect rolling blackouts, but they hadn't come. Instead it seemed that those who had lost power just continued to be without. There was no rolling. Tuesday we also started to lose water pressure. That seemed more worrisome than losing power because we had been dripping our faucets to save our pipes. The water stopped altogether for a time, but then trickled back. The authorities said that everyone dripping their faucets was causing the water pressure to drop. The city of Houston told people to stop dripping their faucets so that the pressure would come back. But then plumbers commented that the city of Houston wouldn't be paying for people's busted pipes when they stopped dripping them. So, we continued to drip our faucets. Tuesday was really cold. We wore a lot of layers, stayed inside all day, but we were still quite cold. Then Tuesday at 10:14 p.m., the power went out. The kids were already asleep and there was nothing to do but sleep at that point.

Attempting school.

Wednesday we had no power all day. It was incredibly cold. There was a cold rain all day long. We are not used to these cold temperatures, so it just felt intensely cold. We did school because at least it gave us something to do. We huddled in our playroom with lots of blankets. The kids were kind of crazy all day. Incredibly loud. Completely unfocused. But we attempted to get everything done. At lunch time we were able to light our gas stovetop which put a huge smile on my face to see the fire. We made a big pot of chicken noodle soup (lots of cans!). It tasted amazing to have something hot. In the afternoon we walked around the house with 'high knees' to get our blood pumping. We needed to warm up and we needed to discourage the kids from wrestling. Do you know we can't go to the hospital?! We lit the stove for dinner and had another warm meal. We had to eat fast, though, because the food got cold quickly in the cool air. At 6 p.m. it was dark outside and we didn't have a lot of mojo left. We tried to play Uno but for whatever reason, it was very chaotic. Earlier, Caroline had helped me make all the beds up with 4-5 blankets each. So we decided to just hunker down for the night. Todd and I were still awake at 9 pm. when the lights came on. Most people we knew had lost power for 2 full days, so we had expected the same. We were so surprised and happy when it came back. The upstairs of our house showed 53°. We don't know what it was downstairs, but it was a lot cooler.

Candlelight dinner.

Our happiness with the power being restored was soon changed to curiosity by the very loud noises coming from downstairs. At first it sounded like someone was trying to break in the house, because the sound was a very loud tapping/hitting noise. But then we noticed the tapping was too consistent to be an intruder. We walked down to find our refrigerator going crazy. All the lights in front were blinking on and off very quickly. The ice maker was going berserk with the loud tapping noise. Nothing we did stopped it except unplugging it. Todd messed with it for a while and noticed that even with the refrigerator plugged in, it wasn't cooling while it was making all that noise. We left it unplugged for the night and Todd googled it in the morning. From everything he read, it sounded like the motherboard/control panel in the back was fried from the power outage. That wasn't good.

On Thursday Todd went to order a new refrigerator. He said the line at the store was like a Disney World line. He had to enter the store through the garden center, then it wound up and down all the lawn equipment aisles before he could actually walk through the store. There were workers walking around the line of people announcing there was no more PVC or copper piping in stock. Most everyone was there because they had busted pipes.

It was hard to remember what day it was as the week went on. Everything was cancelled - we had no CC, no Awana, no jiu-jitsu. Todd was home all week as his university was closed. The passage of time was noted by how much we were getting on each other's nerves. Being cooped up inside was wearing on us.

We were incredibly blessed that our pipes did not burst. We are on the hook for a new refrigerator, but Todd's always good at planning for these types of things, so we're okay. Right now we are still having to boil our water, which isn't fun, but it is do-able. The list for MUDs (water districts) still under a boil water notice is quite long, so we're not sure when it will be safe to use again. I cannot wait until it is. Trying to do dishes and brush teeth with boiled water is a bit more complicated and tiresome.

This weekend was a lifesaver. The temperatures got up in the 60s and the kids were happy to get outside and play. And concert season has begun again.