IRENE

After clearing out underneath the deck and securing a safe place to park my van (which is only worth about $1000, but we definitely could not replace it with something that would actually run well, thus we could not afford to lose it to a tree!), we endured a full day and into the night of being pummelled by wind and rains. Somewhere around late afternoon, trees started to fall, and our gorgeous tree-filled neighborhood became a living nightmare. We were fortunate to find only a mess to clean up the next morning.

Many people in our neighborhood were not so fortunate....

We had gone out riding around the neighborhood around 6 pm during a little lull in the storm (hurricanes are like that....you have bands of wind and rain and then quiet and then more bands) and found this destruction. I talked to the people in this house the next day and they said they were bailing out water all night long because of the damage the tree did to their dormers.

This road was closed for almost a full week because the power lines were down and entangled in this tree.

This is one of our friend's houses. Sadly, their pop up camper is destroyed.....but at least it was not their home!

We actually saw a tree fall on a home at twilight. It was leaning on another tree and then all of a sudden the other tree gave way. It made an awful eery creaking noise and then smashed through the roof of a rambler. The poor little older lady who lived there by herself had been next door at her neighbors riding out the storm and came running out to see what had happened. She was in shock. Chris and Caleb jumped out of the car and went to help her by moving all of her furniture from her master bedroom and office into the rest of the house so that it wouldn't get destroyed by the rain that was pouring in.

Destruction was everywhere....we came home that night and let the kids sleep downstairs. We figured it would be safer there if a tree were to fall on our home. Fortunately, we did not have to worry about that. We were one of the lucky homes in our neighborhood. As a matter of fact, we never even lost power because of the storm! Most of our neighborhood was out for almost a full week!