Hurricane Irene

It was quite an eventful week out here in Virginia. First we had an earthquake, and then on Saturday we braced ourselves for hurricane Irene to come barreling up our coast. Luckily for us, it was only a tropical storm since we are a couple hours inland. However, she did do a fair amount of damage, with wind gusts of up to 71 MPH. There were trees knocked over onto roads and houses, and major power outages for about 75% of Richmonders. We went about 78 (miserable) hours without power. The food in our fridge all went bad by the next day, when we were unable to get ice. Luckily, we saved the meat in the freezer and were able to get ice the following day. We had some amazing friends (lucky people WITH power) who had us over so we could escape the heat of our house during the hottest hours of the day. Steve had to go on rotation, so it was just the girls and I left to sweat it out. They hated sleeping in the basement, and most of the time chose not to sleep at all. But, we got through it and are so happy and thankful to have our power back on, and to have come out of this disaster completely unharmed. It really has made me think about all the blessings we have and the things I take for granted everyday, like being able to give my children cold drinks when it's hot. I felt so bad for Capri, she wanted a drink of milk and kept asking and signing for it, pleading with me to give her some milk. All we had that day was warm water, and lukewarm milk. Since she is lactose intolerant, we couldn't give her the milk. It was so sad!
Here are some pictures from the adventure, starting with during the storm. We had our friends, the Healy's come over for dinner. We made breakfast casserole and crepes. They brought some seriously  delicious peach cobbler! We thought it would be fun to hang out, and watch a movie during the storm. Ha. The power went out before they even got to our house. :)

The food. Hey, it's important, right?

 The girls just played through the storm.

 Our partners in crime.

Nothing like a little chess by candlelight. 

The Aftermath:

 This is a tree that fell on a power line and onto our street, blocking it completely. 

 Here is our charming little creek's nasty makeover... I couldn't believe how full it was, or how fast it was moving. 

 Irene completely uprooted this gigantic tree across the street from the entrance to our apartment complex.

During the storm we could hear tree's breaking:

Crazy, huh?

Well, we're hoping that we've seen the worst of the storm season, but I'm a little worried we haven't just yet. Thanks to everyone who offered to let us come stay with them and kept us in their prayers, we really appreciated it.