Come on Irene...

So within one week we survived an earthquake and a hurricane. In case anyone isn't sure, we live in Delaware; yup I said Delaware, not so commonly known as whackadoodle weather state apparently.

So our Saturday night was spent like this:

Doesn't that look like all the comforts of home? That would be the cement basement floor. Luckily for us, the kids had gone to bed with just some rain going on. Within a half-hour, the winds picked up and we saw our tree get swept away into the darkness, along with this indescribable swoosh sound. After we ran next door to check on the neighbors (more on that in a second), we ran back inside, grabbed the kids from their bed and headed down to our basement to wait out the tornado warning. It was kind of surreal not knowing what was going on outside, but sitting nicely in the basement. Amazingly the internet worked fine, so I was able to post and search online for the latest weather predictions, etc.

We stayed down there until...

the water started invading our space. We ended up moving to the first floor, with mattresses in the dining room, foyer and living room. I basically spent the night awake, waiting for the next tornado siren to go off. Each kid woke up one time and said, "why are we down here?" I downplayed it and said, "just because of the storm." They went back to sleep peacefully with no clue what was happening outside.

When the sun came up and the rain subsided, this is what we saw:

That's our shed that holds the bikes, waterslide, moonbounce etc, and that's the 250 year old tree that once stood behind it. The pieces sticking up on our neighbors yard are all from our tree, which totally uprooted and fell sideways. Now the unlucky part is that it nicked the neighbors roof and hit their addition a little, but other than that everyone was spared...

except for this neighbor's car! The house on the right is the house next to us, that the tree hit. The car belongs to the owner in the house on the left, who figured his car would be safe from any hurricane damage, you know with being parked between two houses. Not so much.

This is from our back corner, just next to the shed, looking into our neighbor's yard. Not sure you can see, but their wood deck is in smithereens. Shockingly, the tree is touching their windows, but didn't break one!

So all in all, it was eventful. We are incredibly fortunate that no one was hurt and the actual damage was not so much. So far we've had two neighbors ask for some of the wood for firewood!

And let me tell you, the back side of that shed is covered in mildew, because it has never seen sunlight, having always been protected by this massive tree. I guess now it'll have a chance to!