Tropical Storm Irene Day. . .

We spent all day Saturday trying to get as prepared as possible in case we were without power for numerous days, had flooding in our home, trees fallen on our house. . . etc.  Fortunately very little of our preparation was necessary since we only lost power for eleven hours.  It's a little stretch to put "ONLY", because when you're spoiled with electricity 24-7, 11 hours feels like a LONG time, especially on a dark day with three kiddos. 
Without knowing what to expect our mantra was 'better safe, than sorry'.  So, not knowing how early the storm would hit we decided to sleep downstairs Saturday night.  It was an adventure for the kids, and a little too much like camping out for Will & I.  We've become accustomed to our new mattress so Will especially had a very sore back after sleeping on our old mattress in our old bed again.  We woke up to worse weather than we expected, no rain but SERIOUS wind. 

 Westyn tried to sneak into bed with the girls a couple of times and more than once we saw him reach up for their feet and say, "tickle, tickle" then giggle.    Now the basement is 1500 sq. ft. so there was no crowding or lack of space which was nice.  The kids were able to run around everywhere and found toys they hadn't seen in awhile so there's was no problem keeping them entertained.

We decided to take advantage of having power and Will did some work while the kids & I did a project.  (We made caterpillars out of puffs).  It ended up I was doing most of the work sewing them together (I haven't been able to find my glue gun since the move & the kids wanted something they could play with immediately thus sewing. . . .)    : )

  It was during our craft that the lights went out at which time the kids ran and grabbed their new flashlights and ran under the stairs to the darkest place in the basement.

They spent a good 45 minutes doing a loop that started at Westyn's bed, went under the stairs where Ethne's pillow is in the top pic & then crawled out from the other side in a little doorway I left for them.  It must have worn Westyn out because as soon as his head hit the pillow at nap time he was out.  Will thought he should set a good example & was out as quickly as Westyn.  : )  I let the girls stay up since I figured we'd be going to bed earlier than usual with sunset being at 7:30pm.   I love how prepared Westyn looks in this pic, "flashlight. . . check!"

Below is a pic of our downed tree.  I'm not exactly sure how we're going to cut it down, but I'll let Will figure that one out.  Dan, who I mention later in this post, offered his help & his chainsaw to come help us cut down the SUPER tall tree that's in our front yard & leaning toward our house.  I'm hoping the HOA, which I don't think exists yet, won't have a problem with us cutting down that hazard. : )

After nap time  the kids were so busy playing Will & I actually got to play a couple games of Scrabble.  He dominated the first game & I dominated the second.  It was too dark for us to play a third so Will worked on some dinner for the kids while I filled the stair nook with glow-in-the-dark stars.  It's unbelievable that yesterday was the first time I, Wendy use-to-be Craig, put glow-in-the dark stars up in a house in at least a decade!  Once those were up we gathered the kids up and got them ready for bed.  While we were upstairs brushing teeth, Dan from Will's work drove up with a generator in tow.  He & Will set it up on the back porch & plugged in the fridge.  We were only going to leave it plugged in for 45 minutes since we didn't want any carbon monoxide problems.  As fate would have it just a couple minutes before we went back upstairs to turn it off the power came back on.   

The kids were bummed & kept saying how they didn't want it to come back on.  Will & I were relieved and immediately put everything back in the fridge/freezer from the cooler.  We slept downstairs again, mostly because the kids wanted to so badly but there were also still some pretty strong gusts of wind.  The last picture above could be misleading.  I took the picture this morning & told the girls that it was only 4 more days till we get to see Grandma, Ethne erupted in applause.  : )  Just thought I'd get another pic of where we were playing yesterday.  We seriously were camped out on that rug most of the day since it was the brightest place in the basement.

Thank you to all of you who said prayers for our safety.  I still don't know how that tree ended up falling away from our house instead of on it but I know I picture angels pushing it that way.  : )  Wouldn't be the first time God sent His angels to very obviously keep us safe!  : )
Here's hoping that that was the first and last time we will be that close to a hurricane. . . .  Love you all!