#421 - Lanterns

Our house occasionally has power outages, most famously on Thanksgiving Eve a few years ago (leaving us with a houseful of people and no way to cook the food we had purchased!). Thinking ahead, my fabulous in-laws gave us two lanterns, the kind you would take camping with you. So last night, with our 6-hour-blackout, we used our lanterns for the first time! They are Rayovac 18-watt twin tube lanterns, and they worked great. Our power stopped at about 8:30, as I was typing up the lemonade entry for the blog... TLG was still awake and it was a little spooky for him. We got him settled in with his flashlight and got the candles lit downstairs, then set up the lanterns! They put out a lot of light, and we ended up having one downstairs and one up. We set the upstairs lantern near the stairs to use as a nightlight for anybody who needed it, which really helped all of us (since none of us slept well). The power came back on about 2:00am and TLG got up to ask for more batteries for his flashlight. This morning's "Arthur" program on PBS featured a storyline about a blizzard where the electricity goes out, and TLG knew exactly what they were talking about. Then he saw the lanterns sitting in our kitchen, and he wanted to figure out how they work. Very timely program, and what a help those lanterns are!