Nine days. We went nine straight days without having electricity. Finally yesterday, sometime around 3pm, CL&P finally made their way over to our house and gave us power again.

For those reading this that don't live in Connecticut, it was absolutely ridiculous how long it took CL&P to restore power to everyone. Sure, there was a freak snowstorm in October that weighted down the leaves on everyone's trees, but regardless, you need to have a contingency plan in place for when storms happen. The fact that millions of people were without power for around a week is absurd.

For the first five nights or so, we toughed it out and slept in the living room. We got a fire going as hot as we could in the fireplace, and then would try to just sleep through the cold when it went out in the middle of the night.

Stan was with us a few nights, but his kennel was running a generator, so we were lucky enough to drop him off so we didn't have to worry about him at all.

We were also lucky that a few of our friends got power before us and were absolutely gracious enough to have us over. The Hoods hosted dinners for those that didn't have electricity for four straight nights and then Anne had us and the Martens crash at her place for three days/nights until we finally got the switch turned back on.

So, we're without power, Christi is forced to take 6 days of PTO (not really you're ideal vacation in a 50° house all day/night) and we're paying an arm and a leg to keep our dog happy for a week. So what's the bright side?

I bought a chainsaw.

Instead of paying an arborist $250/hr. to cut down and haul away our tree, I went out and bought an inexpensive chainsaw and Ben and I did it ourselves.

Unfortunately, we lost the front half of an absolutely gorgeous tree in the back of our house. But the bright side is that it's extremely fun to use a chainsaw. In doing so, I saved a lot of money as well as storing a lot of new firewood for next winter.

The really good news is that we were able to pay our friends back as we went to the Hoods and Anne's houses and chopped down some trees that they had in their yards as well, so that way we didn't feel like we were just mooching off of our friends for an entire week.

All in all, this week absolutely sucked. However, Christi and I kept a very positive spin on it that helped out immensely. Just don't be surprised if you get wood chips or firewood for your Christmas presents this year.