Handful of Heppers: Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and Growth Spurts, Oh My!

**This is a long one, folks. Just skip all the text and scroll through the pictures if that's what you're here for :)

There's never a dull moment in our house with three kids under 2 and half and two dogs to keep things lively. But Mother Nature decided that we just didn't have enough excitement in our lives, so she decided to throw us a few curve balls last week.

As I'm sure you know, central Virginia was rocked by a 5.9 earthquake last Tuesday. Having never experienced an earthquake before, when the house started shaking I naively thought our washer was running the spin cycle and was out of balance. I ran into the laundry room and hit the power button only to find that turning the washer off did nothing to stop the house from bouncing up, down, and all around. After about 15 more seconds, the shaking was over, and I realized what had really happened. And then the real fun began because the earthquake had happened at the worst time possible: right after I'd gotten all three girls down for their afternoon nap. Sweet. Of course, all three girls woke up screaming and I spent the rest of the afternoon calming upset children. But with no damage to our house, all was pretty much forgotten by the following morning. Just in time to turn on the news and learn of the hurricane heading our way.

With Hurricane Irene swirling up the east coast Friday evening, I pretty much expected that we'd be stuck in the house for at least all of Saturday. Being trapped inside all day with a toddler and two infants doesn't scare me that much; to me, that's just another day in my life. What did scare me was losing power. What would happen if we were forced to spend hours or days without electricity? How would we watch countless episodes of Dora, Olivia, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse? How would I be able to vaccuum whenever I pleased? And most importantly, how would I keep my stash of ice cream frozen???

When Saturday morning rolled around, we anxiously watched the arrival of Irene through our front window, and we each prepared prepared for whatever aftermath she would bring in different ways:

Caroline: Caroline spent the whole day engaging in the imaginary play schemes that no one understands (but that we dare not interrupt), getting into mischief, and having fun with Daddy. She paid no attention to the storm...it was just another normal day in her world.

Play-Doh fun!

Caroline puts Babies Gigi and Nyny to sleep.

Paul: Daddy did what I imagine most men did: he took care of the practical preparations. This included checking our flashlights for batteries, moving our cars from underneath the enormous maple tree in case a limb came crashing down, filling up water bottles so we wouldn't have to drink tap water (oh, the horror!) if the power went out and our refrigerator lost the ability to filter, and verifying that his beer supply was robust enough to last at least through the weekend.

Lauren: I did all the laundry and ran the dishwasher. If we lost power, at least we'd have enough clean underwear and sippy cups to last us for days. I charged my phone to it's fullest capacity because the threat of having it die and losing my ability to play Words with Friends was terrifying. And of course, I vacuumed. I savored every last minute of dirt-sucking, knowing it could be days before I had to chance to do it again. I also fed the babies nonstop while I did all those things (see below).

Julia and Margaret: The twins decided that Saturday was as good a time as any for a growth spurt. So they ate, ate some more, slept, ate, ate some more, played, ate, and slept. All.day.long.

Julia shows off her fantastic head control!

Margaret sound asleep.

Margaret giving us one of her enormous smiles.

Frances and Isabel: The dogs handled the storm in predicable ways. Isabel found a comfy spot on the couch and snored her way through the wind and rain and Frances spent her time either clinging to Paul or in hiding.

Poor crazy Frances!

Around 6pm, after several very short power outages throughout the day, the power went out and stayed out. With hopeful hearts that the outage would only last a few hours, we ate dinner and went to bed. Soon enough Sunday morning dawned, bringing with it blue skies and cooler temperatures, but not our electricity. We joined our neighbors outside to survey the damage and begin picking up the branches and brush that had littered our street and yard during the 12 hour storm. Luckily, our house and street suffered no damage other than the debris. The surrounding streets and homes were not so fortunate. Power lines were down, enormous trees had been uprooted and a few unlucky homes had be smashed by fallen trees. It became apparent very quickly that our power would be out for more than just a few hours. I couldn't help but feel very anxious about how I would survive without the modern day conveniences I took completely for granted.

Luckily, we have the most fantastic neighbors in the world. Seriously, almost every house on our block is home to wonderful families, couples, and people that are incredibly kind, helpful, and fun to be around. One of our neighbors offered us a generator and within a couple hours our refrigerator was running, and I had a whopping three outlets at my disposal to plug appliances into. And I'm sure you guess what the first thing I plugged in was...my trusty Shark vacuum. That's right, by the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, I'd sucked up enough dust, dirt, and hurricane debris to bring my sanity level back to the "acceptable" range. We spent the rest of the day running extension cords through our house, hooking up fans to keep the temperature down, and stuffing our fridge and freezer with all of our neighbors' perishables.

It certainly was no cake walk to live without AC and every appliance up and running, but I didn't complain for a second because I was so grateful to have that generator! We made it through the next 24 hours with no major issues and were delighted on Monday evening when our power came back on in full force. Never before have I been so excited to feel my AC kick on! And even though it was a very tumultuous week for me, I don't think the girls were even phased by it, thank goodness!

Only 10 weeks old, and we have both an earthquake and a hurricane under our belts!!