Our Hurricane Weekend

The effects of Hurricane Irene started Friday night-- just a lot of rain that continued all day Saturday. I was expecting to lose power, probably for a few days. So I had started prepping earlier in the week and making an inventory of what needed to be used up. I didn't do a lot of cooking, trying to get rid of all the left overs. On Saturday morning I cooked the rest of the chicken from the freezer, and it was good that I did. The wind started picking up late Saturday morning. We lost power on Saturday right after lunch time and didn't get it back until Monday night around 6 pm making it about 53 hours without power.

Here are some of the things we did on Saturday to pass the time:

Our friends the Taylors live in our same complex, so they came to spend the day. The boys did some coloring. (You can see the rain, rain, rain on the window).

Luke acted out sleeping beauty-- he was the prince. Patrick didn't like that game.

Just kidding. Luke just has this weird thing about smelling people.

Jared and Patrick played all kinds of balance/wrestling/hand games. I think they were the most bored of all. They even braved the storm before it got too bad because Patrick just had to have pizza for dinner.

Luke and Caleb played lots and lots of games together. I'm glad we had friends to pass the time with.
It really started picking up early in the evening and we decided to make it a sleep over, so the Taylors stayed the night and the adults got to play games for the first time since Micah was born and probably even before. It was so nice! Too bad we wasted it on a hand of Skip-bo thatwould not end! Our apartment got a little bit of damage, but nothing severe. We had a leak on one spot of the roof I guess because there was some water pooling on the kitchen ceiling that started to drip. Now there is a big, ugly stain there. But that's nothing to really complain about. I'm so thankful that we were all safe.

It didn't look too scary outside expect for one tree that thrashed around and swayed like crazy. Judging from right outside our windows we didn't think there was much damage at all. But Sunday morning we went for a little walk and saw lots of trees and branches that had fallen. There were places on some of the buildings were siding had torn off. So there was more than we had expected.

Overall having no electricity turned out to be a fun adventure and the cause of a lot more family time than normal. It was awesome! We drove to the beach to play and look around. We went to the tennis courts to let Luke ride his bike a few times. We went for a walk. We hung out at home and played games. We cooked together on the camp stove. And one night Jared and I read together by candlelight and just held hands for awhile. I loved it!

My only regret is that (ONCE AGAIN!) I didn't take pictures when I should have. When will I ever learn?