Hurricane Irene

Well, we were ready! It ended up not being as big of a deal (for us), as they were touting on tv. For us personally, the Nor'easter we had a few years ago was a much worse storm. However, that is only our personal opinion. Ask someone right on the water or with a tree on their house, and you'll hear a different story I'm sure. It definitely was a storm to be reckoned with, but we came out none the worse for wear.

This was the first hurricane to hit us since Isabelle in Sept 2003...we didn't move here until June 2004, so it was a first for us!

Our hurricane to-do list on the fridge

We had 3 cases of 36 waters, and filled all our jugs with tap water (five 1 gallon jugs). We filled the tub with water and half of the kitchen sink with water. So that we would be able to flush the toilet and wash hands and stuff, in the event of extensive power outages.

We boarded up all the windows on the main floor - our renter (upstairs) left town for the storm. This left our house...very dark inside!

We got our bedroom (the safest room in the house), all ready for all 6 of us to sleep in - just in case. By putting out the futon. We ended up not needing this, as the winds weren't strong enough to make us worried about our trees coming down. Better safe than sorry, right?

We did not experience very high winds in our area (a blessing with all our HUGE trees), and our power only flickered a few times but never went out. YAY! "High winds" are a relative term in a hurricane. They were high enough to knock over half of Lauren's backyard tree. Thankfully it didn't hit her house or shed, but it was a small tree...so there wouldn't have been much damage if any.

This is the biggest branch that came down (bottom left) on our property. And notice a portion of it sticking out of the ground (middle right). We praise God for the protection we had, and the convenience of not having to repair our roof, house, cars, etc. Those trees of ours have been here for so long, they really are a sturdy bunch.

Sunday morning we went to church (sunday school and evening service were cancelled). We do not live in an area that floods, so we really noticed no ill affects at all in getting to church. But there were people at church still without power, and with large trees fallen etc. And certain portions of our area were very flooded. During Isabelle 1.8million people were out of power for a long time (like more than a week or something!), but this time only about 300thousand lost power, and I'm sure some of them are still out today, but hopefully will be back on within the week.

We are glad we took precautions and really had a great weekend at home. We watched the storm on tv, we made cookies & brownies. We napped. We weren't scared at all, we felt very safe with our windows covered and the winds not being as high as anticipated.

We've heard threat of a few more hurricanes out there...we'll be ready!