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How Our Family Celebrated Earth Hour 2011

Have you ever heard of Earth Hour?

From its inception as a single-city initiative — Sydney, Australia – in 2007, Earth Hour has grown into a global symbol of hope and movement for change. Earth Hour 2010 created history as the world’s largest ever voluntary action with people, businesses and governments in 128 countries across every continent coming together to celebrate an unambiguous commitment to the one thing that unites us all — the planet.
~from the Official Earth Hour YouTube channel

Earth Hour at Our House

This year, we very nearly ‘forgot’ all about Earth Hour.

We had just got home from a children’s birthday party which ended at 7.30 pm. That was late enough, but then, on our way out of the venue, Princess Three took a headlong tumble and ended up with a bloody nose which took at least 15 minutes, a few tissues and a lot of cuddling to soothe enough to start the drive home.

We got home and rushed everyone into their pyjamas. It was a military manoeuvre with Hubs and me running between getting the girls ready and warming up our dinner. (I was STARVING!) The girls had just come down to say Goodnight, when I glanced at my Twitter stream on my phone and saw the words ‘Earth Hour’.

Pause.

Panic!

How could we have forgotten? The girls had even made tealight lanterns at Rainbows that week in preparation. (Rainbows is the English equivalent to American Daisy Scouts.) I looked at my watch.

8.25 pm.

Panic! Panic!

I yelled (again, military style…are you sensing a theme here?) to Hubs- “Earth Hour!!” Suddenly, everyone in the family was running here and there…madly getting every candle we could find, placing them in strategic places and Hubs lighting them. The girls rushed upstairs in a blink and got their lanterns.

Unbelievably, at 8.30- the candles were all lit and Princess One, with great ceremony, (because she’s a bit prone to dramatics, you see), turned off all the lights.

Breathe.

Suddenly we all relaxed. The stress and hustle and bustle that we had felt only 5 minutes before all melted away. We sat back and looked around at all the candles. It really was magical.

Because the kids had just been to a birthday party and were so very tired, this year, we only allowed them to stay up for 15 minutes of the hour. They decided they wanted to play ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’. So that’s what they did, by candlelight. There was no squabbling, just three sisters having fun together. We talked a little about what Earth Hour is all about and why we should save electricity and other sources of power. They were very excited. We were pleased for the wonderful teaching opportunity. At 8.45, they reluctantly went to bed, carrying their lanterns gingerly. Hubs tucked them in, said prayers with them and let them have the first five minutes in bed by candlelight. They were asleep by then.

Finally, we had our dinner! Somehow, during that half hour with the girls, in the candlelight, even my hunger didn’t seem so urgent.

I tried to get a decent picture of the steam coming off of the food in the candlelight, which also gave it a mystical look. Not too successful, but here it is:

Here are a few more pictures from the evening:

This is one of the things I love the most about Earth Hour. It forces you to take a step back, and just ‘be’. Candlelight is a wonderful thing. I talked about this in my post about Earth Hour 2009. I am ashamed to say that we haven’t kept up with our intention in 2009 to have a candlelit evening every week. But this is a good opportunity to re-commit to that idea. Earth Hour has once again reminded us to slow down, enjoy the life we’ve been given, be grateful, savour the moment, and think of ways to help those who have so very much less than we do. This is a call to action, not  for a charity, but for the very children who we just put to bed. If we all don’t take an active role in caring for our world, their world…there just won’t be anything left for them.

I, for one, pledge to try just a little harder this year.

Join me if you’d like.