"No Man is a Failure Who Has Friends"

The title of this post is a quote from one of my all time favorite movies, "It's A Wonderful Life". Cody and I watch that movie every year around Christmas time and sporadically throughout the year as we see fit. I thought about titling it "Snow Day", "Snowlicious", or perhaps even "Snowtastic", but the true meaning of this post comes from the title above.

Last week, Cody was out of town for work for the entire week. This is the second trip that he is taken in the last month wherein he has been gone for the entire week. I feel very proud of myself that I am able to take care of my family/"hold down the fort", while my husband is away. We miss Cody tremendously when he is gone, but ultimately, "I GOT this".

This last week produced lot's of snow. I mean if you check Facebook, Twitter or any other social network that streams status updates you would see that everyone's post revolved around the weather. Where am I going with this? Let me tell you.

On Monday night, I snuggled into my lonely bed and went to sleep. I woke up to the sound of the power shutting off. Great! I move to the guest bedroom so that I can hear the babies (without the use of a monitor). Around 7:00 am the power is back on and the kiddos are awake, so I rush around to get breakfast ready. As I flip the handle to the water, I realize our water has frozen . After checking all faucets, I find that the bathrooms are only producing cold water, there is no water in the kitchen, and no hot water anywhere (and didn't have hot water until Friday).

Around 8:00 am the power is back off, around 8:15 am the power is back on, around 9:00 am the power is back off, around 9:15 am the power is back on....UGH. So in one of the many power outages, my heater quits working. At first I hear the fan going, but when I stand under a vent it is just blowing cold air. At this point, I try to shut off the heater to stop the cold air but it won't shut off. I tuck the babies snug into their rooms for their morning nap and plug in a nice warm heater in their room. I called a company, Air Squad, to come out and fix our heater. They arrived within 30 minutes and took care of everything.

How does all this relate to my title you might ask? Well, while trying to deal with all the little issues around the house, I was overwhelmed with calls of concern and support from our friends who knew Cody was away. Our neighbors and great friends, The Pauls, called me everyday to check in and make sure we were okay. They offered their home and any other thing that I needed to help out. I also received calls from people I work with and several other friends offering help! Also, my super nanny, Morgan, stayed the night with me every night so that she could let me get some work done and help me out with the kids.

I can't help but feel truly blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives. We sometimes feel very sad that we don't have family very close, but it is times like this that make us realize we have a wonderful set of friends that are like family to us.

So I want to say a special thanks to all those who called and offered help. You are greatly appreciated. I hope that we can offer the same kind of support whenever you are faced with adversity.

"One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." - Proverbs 18:24