This wasn't the candlelight we were supposed to have tonight...

With tonight being the second night of Hanukah, I expected to be lighting candles. My plans for the evening included a trip to the store to purchase candles for the menorah since it had kind of snuck up on me this year and I didn't have any beforehand. I also had a list of things I wanted or needed to get done around the house.

Nowhere in all of my plans, was a blackout included.

Right around the time we were putting the girls to bed, I heard a distant pop, or bang, and then everything went dark. Very dark.

And 3 girls screamed, almost simultaneously.

So instead of getting them in bed with nightlights and lullabies playing softly, we soothed and explained, attempting to distract them with flashlight antics.

We lit candles in the living room and kitchen after our first attempt at putting all of them to bed failed miserably. I think if it had happened earlier in the evening, we could've made it into an adventure, something to be explored and investigated. But at this point, we just needed to get them to sleep.

Abby and Hannah finally fell asleep on the couch. Becca was not interested in sleep at all. She played, looked at books (in the half-light), and played pat-a-cake with me over and over and over and over... She's actually quite good at it on her own now, by the way. :)

No power = no computer = no internet = no blogging... Sigh.

After the big girls fell asleep, Ron went to bed - reasoning that there certainly wasn't anything else to do. I stayed up with the tired, cranky but yet constantly in motion toddler. I finally got her in bed about 10 minutes before the lights came back on. Thankfully she was asleep by then, because her bedroom light was up all of the way and that certainly would've been a shock.

So here I sit close to midnight, with my list left undone, my blogging friends' sites unvisited, and my errands un-run. But I do have to say that even with all of that, I did enjoy the candlelight, even if it wasn't quite the kind of candlelight that I'd planned on for tonight. :)