Aftermath

Before - next door neighbor's
After - same next door neighbor's


Oak tree in front of our house!!

Succinct version: We're OK.

Longer version:

Friday: We went about our business as though it was a normal night with the kids and stuck to our usual routine.  Dinner, bath, bed time.  We put the kids down in their usual rooms and beds.  No sense in freaking them out and having them get a bad night's rest.  We moved some furniture around the house away from windows and different breakable things.  Bret and I sat down to watch a movie on TV.  Around 11pm Friday night, September 12th, the electricity went out.  Our movie date was over.  We moved Isabella to a palate we had made next to our bed in the master bedroom.  Around 2am Diego woke up - I nursed him and then put him back to sleep in a pack-n-play in our closet.  The whole thing was really cool, eerie and scary all at the same time.  The winds picked up some massive speed.  When you lie down in our bed and look up through our window all you see are trees - as if you were in the forest. Normally, this is a really beautiful, calming sight.  But on Friday night the sight of the pine trees just blowing and blowing was not giving me a sense of peace.  The wind picked up speed and the trees were swaying and threatening to give way to the wind and fall on us at any moment.  That's when we took refuge in our hallway.  Bret moved Isa's twin bed into the hallway which is where he and I slept.  We moved Isa in her palate to the hallway as well.  Diego stayed in the closet.  Away from the wind and with complete dark, we slept great until around 8:00am.  

Saturday:

The true aftermath.  We woke up to the phone ringing to folks calling to check in on us.  Thanks for calling and checking in!  It is nice to know that people were worried and praying for us.  We only answered family phone calls as we didn't want to use the battery on our cell phones too much.  The power was still gone, but we had running water.  We went walking down the street to check things out.  A big oak tree from our next door neighbors fell onto our yard.  Lots of limbs, pine needles and of course pine cones fell into our yard.  But, no major damage.  Unfortunately a sweet, older couple two houses down had an oak tree fall straight into their den!  They had tarps and buckets and different neighbors had been by to help them out.  Wow.  Bret said they were in good spirits.

Since we have a gas stove, we cooked ourselves a delicious breakfast of omelettes with onions, red bell peppers, ham, and cheese.  Delish.   We used up most of our milk and Isa had a special treat of chocolate milk.  She thinks hurricanes are great if it means chocolate milk!  Oh, and a complete side note, she calls the hurricane Mike.  

During the kids nap time, we worked on the yard cleaning it up, but are definitely not finished!  There is still lots of work to be done.  That evening we had some friends come over for dinner.  They brought over the food and we cooked it on our stove.  We had kung pao chicken with rice while the kids had breaded sour cream chicken, asparagus and rice.  Pretty yummy hurricane food!  

We chose not to take baths since the water had very little pressure at this point and the Mayor said that it had been compromised (whatever that means!).  Isabella had a really hard time going to bed.  Apparently she is afraid of the dark!!  We should have known seeing that we almost always leave her light dimmed for her, but it's usually with the excuse that she is reading books - which she does read about 2-5 books to herself any given night.  I usually check in on her and Diego before we head to bed and turn out her light.  

We had some friends who live near the Beltway and had electricity.  The Walters kindly let Bret come over to store some freezer items and to charge our phones.  

Sunday:

We woke up with the daylight and decided to keep on sleeping!  The day was drizzly and overcast.  The water pressure was even less and our toilets were not flushing. Yep, definitely headed out of town.  We packed up and left and are now in air conditioning again!  We've talked to some neighbors who say that the power is still out.  Apparently it can be out anywhere from 2-4 weeks.  Wow.  

We are just so thankful that the trees that did fall mostly fell onto the streets.  It was a neat adventure and experience (especially in hindsight).  Nature is incredible.  It makes it so clear how little control we have.  We can be wiped out in just a matter of hours just like that.  Amazing.  Clarity.  Thank you God for our awesome shelter and for sparing us the hassle of dealing with a damaged home.