Rain! The good and the bad

We have been anxiously waiting for rain. It has been so hot and dry here that we are desperately in need of lots of rain. Every day there is a 20% chance of rain, but it rarely happens. Finally last night the sky darkened, there was thunder and lightning in the distance and we felt little raindrops. Yipee! We sat outside for a few minutes on the back porch and watched the rain fall until it started getting us all wet. We went inside and started the evening routine.

This was a big storm - lots of lightning and thunder and a nice rain. I was cleaning up dinner and Dan was bathing Ainsley when all this happened simultaneously:

1) I saw a huge bolt of cloud to ground lightning- it hit the ground behind us and to the right
2) There was a massive bolt of thunder- amazingly loud
3) Another loud boom- like an explosion. The entire house shook
4) the power went out
5) Ainsley jumped from the tub and into Dan's arms- good catch Dan!
6) Remi, Brie and I jumped straight up in the air ( good startle reflex!)

Ainsley held on to Dan's neck very tightly for a long time- poor baby was really startled.

Good news- it continued to rain for a few hours and we got a nice soak.
Bad news- our power stayed out for hours too.

I heard sirens and there was a firetruck a few houses up on our street. I am sure the house got struck by lightning, or it was really close. Luckily the truck was not there long so no fire resulted. It was raining and there was too much lightning for me to go out and be nosy.

Ainsley went to bed fine. I lit some candles and we watched a movie on our laptop. After a few hours with no power, I started to worry it was a major problem and it would not come back on for a while. I was thinking of all my groceries ( I had just been to Costco....) We called the power company at 9:15 and they could not say when it would be fixed just that they were working on it and 550 houses were affected. So, we took some of our frozen items out and Dan drove to his parents. Of course, our power came back on at 10. I called Dan and he had to turn around and go get the frozen stuff to bring home. A fun late night adventure for him... not. Oh well, surely if we had left it the power would have been out all night. But, we are truly very very thankful for the rain! I am hoping for more today.