Phew, what a storm!!

Well we survived the storm. The remnants of Hurricane Ike that hit Texas last week hit us yesterday. This was easily the nastiest storm I've seen in my lifetime; winds were around 85 mph. Yesterday we were at McDonalds for lunch after church with some friends. The sky started getting dark so we all headed home, but we took a couple of their kids home for a playdate and they took a couple of ours. Traffic lights were already out then and this was only around 1:30 Sunday afternoon. We got home to find no power, but the power went on about 15 minutes later. The power blinked on and off all afternoon. So while the kids played and freaked out, I spent the time finding candles, matches, flashlights, batteries, etc. This just never happens to us so we were totally unprepared. The power went off around 3 p.m. and stayed off. The kids were scared for awhile and disappointed not to have access to tv or the computer. Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep the kids calm and call my friend to arrange switching our kids back. Phil of course is completely calm and playing games on his computer (and running the battery down). The winds were fierce - I have never seen anything like it. In the midst of all this, Ron ventured out to switch our children back; it was nice to have all 4 kids at home. Things calmed down around 7 p.m. so we ventured outside to assess the damage. Our front yard had (still has) lots of branches and leaves strewn around. Some of our toys had blown across the street. We played outside until it got dark and the kids started getting hungry. So we lit candles and fed the kids canned fruit and doritos for dinner. We had to duct tape the fridge and freezer shut because the kids kept wanting to open it and I had too much to do to spend time guarding our fridge.

The kids did remarkably well with the power out. They played together nicely, read books and looked out at what was left of our backyard. Our backyard is fenced in and surrounded by trees, which gives us some privacy from the neighbors. Now however our backyard is covered almost completely by trees. 4 of the trees in our backyard fell; 3 of them had the top half cut completely off and dumped in our yard and 1 was yanked completely out, roots and all, and landed on our neighbor's garage. I'm very thankful that there was no damage to our house though.

Around 8:00 we started putting the kids to bed. I had saved some battery power in my computer so we were all set to watch a DVD, but alas the DVD we picked was bad and by the time we figured it out, the computer had died. *sigh* But just then Brett came home (a good friend of Phil's who is living with us) carrying a pizza box. "Where did you get that pizza?" It turns out that the pizza place up on the corner had a gas generator and was still up and running. So I grabbed some cash and headed down there. They were running low on supplies, but had enough to make us 2 pizzas; we were their last order before they shut down and went home. Praise God!! So we ate, read stories and were all in bed by 9:30. Nothing else to do in the dark. We woke up when the power came back on close to midnight. Yahoo!!

Praise God that we didn't lose any food (we'd put the milk and other perishables in our deep freezer in the garage), that our house wasn't damaged and that we actually had power. My parents in Sunbury, Ohio (30 minutes north of Columbus) still didn't have power as of Monday early afternoon and they said most of Columbus didn't either. A friend of a friend in Cleveland got power back about 3 a.m. Monday morning. Both of my sisters-in-law (one in Cold Spring, KY and one Vernon, IN) didn't have power as of this afternoon and most of Cincinnati is still out. There are a handful of gas stations and grocery stores open across the city. Phil works for our school district fixing computers. He went into work this morning but came home about 20 minutes later. The main computers and servers for the district are at the middle school, which still didn't have power. So we've been at home all day, listening to the children fight (no school today of course). They don't understand why we can't go somewhere like McDonalds; besides the fact that we were just there yesterday, the few fast-food places that are open have lines around the block and are crowded with people that don't have power.

I went outside this afternoon to take pictures of our damage and noticed the mail truck down the street. Even in the midst of the chaos and damage the mail still came. I was impressed!