Powerless, Chasing Waterfalls, and Kindercamp

We've had a quite a busy week that kicked off last weekend with a lovely power outage! Last Thursday we had a quick thunderstorm move through our area that brought down a ton of trees near us. In fact, a huge oak came down that blocked our street. We live at the end of a dead end street, so we were literally trapped! Luckily, Matt had his car at work so we at least had one car with access to the outside world until they had a chance to remove the tree.

With all the downed trees came a power outage as well. Lots of people in the area lost power and I assumed it would come back on within a few hours. However, once 10pm rolled around and we were still using candles and flashlights, I knew it may be a while. The power company told us  Friday that it probably wouldn't be up until Monday, so we packed up ourselves and our refrigerator's contents and moved to a place with power! Luckily we were able to salvage our fridge and freezer's contents, so we were happy about that.

Since we were facing another powerless day on Saturday, we decided to tick an item off the ole summer bucket list and take the kids hiking in nearby Hanging Rock State Park. The weather was perfect (mid-70's) and they had a blast running the trails and discovering hidden gems along the way.

We saw several waterfalls and got a chance to feel how cold the water was while enjoying some great scenery.

Sam "Map Man" Clifford gave us some good navigation tips and led us to the rock garden after lunch. I think this was the kids favorite part because they could climb, climb, climb.

We stopped for milkshakes on the way home and found out upon our return to the house that the power was coming back on!! Yay for false estimations by the power department! So we were able to move back home Saturday night, which was a welcome relief. You sometimes don't realize how much you take for granted with ready, available power until it is taken away.

This week has been packed as well as the triplets have been at Kindercamp! Their new elementary school does a little camp each summer for rising kindergarten students that introduces them to the school, their class, and their teachers. It's a great way to give them a taste of what school will be like before the actual start of school in August. We are splitting the three of them into separate classes for the first time this year, so I was a bit nervous about that. They did great and were all lucky to have a friend or two in each of their classes as well. It's made them even more excited to start school in the fall, but I'm still planning on enjoying a couple more months of summer first!