Power Outage

Today was marked by a power outage that left me reading in the dark by the light of an oil lamp.

Love using these lamps

We knew there was chance of a storm this afternoon, so I spent some time tying up my unruly tomatoes after church this morning.  I'm hoping this is the last time I'll need to tie them; they just keep growing!  Some are even taller than the corn.  It's crazy.  Given that a number of them are getting quite blight-ridden, I'm thinking our tomato days are numbered.  A friend offered for folks to pick some of her tomatoes, so I may do that later this week so that I can still can some of what I was wanting to can for the season.

Unruly tomatoes that have been tamed one last time

The storm came around 3pm or so and just dumped rain.  My parents' rain gauge showed 3 inches after it was over, with the storm lasting around 30 minutes.  Our basement is prone to flooding when large rains occur, so when the power went out (thereby disabling the sump pump) Charles really started to worry.  We have a generator that we'd never used, so Charles pulled it out but was having trouble starting it.  After three separate attempts that had him sweating and breathing heavy it finally started, but only after water had begun to seep into the basement.

The generator once Charles got it running

Once Charles got the sump pump running via the generator, we started sweeping the water in the basement up.  Thankfully, there was no damage; the ordeal was more of a nuisance than anything else.  I'm also thankful that Charles built my canning shelf yesterday since boxes of my canned goods had been sitting on the floor previously.  We eventually ended up plugging the refrigerator into the generator as well, since the power outage lasted until a little past 10pm.

After we ate a dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the girls gave us another Olympic performance.

Hannah's grand finish

Sophie's performance consisted of trying to convince her father to let her have her camera back.  Her Granny gave her a "grown-up" camera for her 6th birthday in July, and Charles has been telling her that she needs to take care of it, put it away when not in use, etc.  Well, apparently Sophie left it out, so Dad confiscated the camera.  Here she is "petting" Charles to try to sweet-talk him into letting her have it back:

Not a great picture, but she is patting his head

He didn't cave, so the scenes that followed this one were not as cute and not as pleasing to the ears either.  I'll spare you the details. :)