Survival Story

Well, Hurricane Irene is pretty well on her way by this time. The news footage, however, continues. From what we've seen the coastal areas have been pretty beat up. In our particular community we only have some fallen branches. I've seen pictures of trees down and heard reports of power outages in nearby areas though. Luckily, our power remained on throughout the storm. I'll be honest, it's been a long 24 hours since the rain started. I feel like I've been hiding out for days, and somehow I woke up feeling hung-over. It was not a good night's sleep. Here's how it all went down (don't get excited, it's pretty uneventful)...

Yesterday we secured all of our outdoor furniture and brought in what we could. I of course couldn't find any bungees in the store, but I did pick up a 10' long nylon strap with a cambuckle that worked quite nicely.

Yep, that's a water table in our kitchen... with a calculator in it.

 

We charged the camping lantern so we'd have light besides candles if power went out.

We threw together a grab-and-go box with our essentials if we had to get out of the house.

I set up "command central" in the playroom where we planned to camp out for the night

These are the stupid trees in our backyard that are so tall and skinny I just knew they were going to snap like twigs in the wind (they didn't). 

What it looked like outside about 24 hours ago... a little ominous.

Our Bebe is recently very fascinated by rain. She looks out the window and says, "raaaaaaaaiiiiiiiin!" It's cute :)

Here's our camp site. 

[I'll tell you the story of that beautiful blanket another day.]

After a long night of tossing and turning and listening to some roaring wind all the while just waiting for those stupid trees to crash through the roof, we woke up this morning to this....

This tree is in our neighbor's back yard two houses away (we live in townhouses for those who didn't know)

This tree is about 10 yards directly behind our next-door neighbor's house

And all of our stupid trees are right where we left them yesterday. All in all, I can't complain. We camped out for a night and get to go on about business as usual today. 

This poor guy, however, has a lot to complain about. 

He was reporting for the local news from Ocean City. All of this sea foam was blowing on him from the water. Apparently he was bracing himself against a bench and that's why he stayed in that spot. Turns out that sea foam is actually toxic and is the result of raw sewage pouring into the water from the storm (according to this report). How sad is that??

Did you survive Hurricane Irene? Do share :)